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Macaroni and Round Steak
1/2 package macaroni 1/2 can tomatoes 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 2 onions Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cupful grated cheese 1 lb. round steak 1/2 cupful breadcrumbs Break macaroni into inch lengths and add it with 1 tablespoonful of the Crisco to plenty of boiling water and boil twenty minutes, then drain. Put steak and onions through a food chopper. Put macaroni into Criscoed fireproof dish, then put in meat and onions, add seasonings, tomatoes, cheese, breadcrumbs, and remainder of Crisco melted. Bake in moderate oven one hour.
A one-dish supper from a Crisco-sponsored menu book, written when macaroni was boiled to softness and a pound of round steak was ground at home. Two things need adjusting: the pasta timing and the amount of liquid.
- The hinge: don't fully cook the macaroniTwenty minutes of boiling followed by an hour in the oven leaves the pasta pasty. Boil it 5 to 6 minutes so it is still firm at the center, then drain.
- Half a packageMacaroni was commonly sold in one-pound packages, so 8 oz of elbows or cut ziti is a reasonable reading. Breaking long macaroni into inch lengths is only needed if you buy it in straws.
- Half a can of tomatoesPeriod tomato cans ran roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb, so half a can is somewhere around 1 to 1 1/4 cups with juice. That is barely enough moisture for 8 oz of pasta plus breadcrumbs; add another cup of tomatoes or stock or the dish bakes dry.
- CriscoThen a novelty, now ordinary vegetable shortening. Any neutral oil or butter works; 3 tablespoons total, one of which the original wastes in the pasta water and can simply be left out.
- Fireproof dishAn ovenproof earthenware or glass baking dish, about 2 quarts. Grease it; the original already adds the cheese and crumbs last, so they finish as a top layer.
- Moderate ovenConventionally around 350-375F; the book gives no figure. One hour is right for a dish this size, and the ground steak should reach 160F; the meat goes in raw, so give the layers a rough mix so no dense seam of beef sits in the middle.
- Round steak through the chopperGround round from the butcher does the same work. If you grind your own, keep the meat cold and use it the same day.
- YieldServes four generously, five or six alongside a salad.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated shortening the company introduced in 1911 — which is why a plain baked macaroni names the brand four times in a few lines. The dish itself belongs to the American economy casserole tradition: a pound of a cheap tough cut, ground to make it tender without long braising, stretched with pasta, canned tomatoes and a crumb crust into a meal for a family. Running round steak through a hand food chopper was a common domestic route to ground beef in this period, and the grinder clamped to the kitchen table made dishes like this easy to put together at home.