Macaroni
Take two large handfuls of macaroni, break in small pieces, put over the fire with just enough water to cover, boil soft, then take one egg, two teaspoons salt, two small teaspoons dry mustard, a piece of butter the size of an egg, small tea-cup milk; take a little hot water off the macaroni into the dish with the other ingredients, mix altogether and simmer a few moments, after this is done, place all in a well buttered quart dish for bak-- ing. Grate a thick layer of cheese on top.
A plain nineteenth-century supper macaroni: no white sauce, no flour, just egg, milk, butter and mustard bound around the pasta and finished with grated cheese. The instructions assume a cook who knows what a baked dish should look like, so the gaps are in quantities and oven heat.
- Two large handfulsRoughly 8 oz (225 g) of dry macaroni, which fills a quart dish once cooked. The original macaroni came in long tubes, hence the instruction to break it up; elbow macaroni needs no breaking.
- Butter the size of an eggA standard old measure equal to about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- Small tea-cup milkA teacup of the period is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz, i.e. three-quarters of a cup, and "small" suggests rather less. Either way it is a lean amount of liquid for 8 oz of pasta, and the dish bakes dry rather than saucy.
- Two teaspoons saltExcessive by modern palates, especially with salty cheese on top. A teaspoon total, counting what goes in the cooking water, is closer to current practice.
- Boil soft, then bakeThe macaroni cooks twice, so stop the boiling while it still has some bite or the finished dish will be mush. Cook it two minutes short of the package time.
- Tempering the eggThe hinge of the recipe. The hot macaroni water is added to the egg, mustard, butter and milk to warm the mixture gradually; add it a spoonful at a time and stir, or the egg scrambles and the binding breaks.
- Simmer a few momentsTake this literally. Once the egg mixture is combined with the macaroni it needs only enough heat to thicken slightly; a real simmer curdles it.
- No oven temperature givenBake at 375F, uncovered, for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cheese has melted and browned in patches and the edges bubble.
- A thick layer of cheeseAssume a firm grating cheese, dry Cheddar or similar; 4 to 6 oz covers a quart dish thickly. Serves four as a supper dish.
Macaroni reached American cookbooks as a genteel novelty in the early nineteenth century and had become thoroughly domestic by the time collections like this one were compiled. The pattern here, pasta boiled soft and then bound with egg, milk and butter and baked under grated cheese, is one of several ways such a dish was put together; the dry mustard is the period's standard trick for sharpening cheese, and it turns up in Welsh rarebit and cheese puddings of the same decades. The modest scale is characteristic: one quart dish, ingredients measured in handfuls and teacups, and nothing that required a butcher.