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Boiled Macaroni
Pour one pint boiling water over five ounces macaroni, let stand half an hour, drain and put in a custard-kettle with boiling milk or milk and water to cover, cook till tender, drain, add a table-spoon butter, and a tea-cup cream, and season with salt and pepper; grate cheese over the top and serve. - Mrs. S. R. T.
A gentle, milk-poached macaroni rather than a baked casserole — closer to what we would now call stovetop mac and cheese. The vessel and the soaking step are the two things worth understanding before you start.
- Custard-kettleThis is a double boiler: an inner pan set over simmering water. It is specified because milk scorches and sticks over direct heat. A heavy-bottomed saucepan on low heat works if you stir often.
- Five ounces macaroniAbout 1 1/4 cups of dry elbows, or a scant 150 g. Serves three as a side dish, two as a supper.
- The soaking stepNineteenth-century macaroni was generally sold as long, hard-dried imported tubes, and period recipes commonly begin by soaking them. Modern dried pasta does not need this, and thirty minutes in boiling water will leave it slack. Cut the soak to ten minutes or skip it and simply simmer the pasta in the milk until tender, 15 to 20 minutes.
- Cooking in milkMilk cooks pasta more slowly than water and the starch released thickens it. Keep the heat low, use enough liquid to keep the macaroni submerged, and top up with hot milk if it goes dry.
- DrainingDrain loosely — a little of the milk clinging to the pasta is what makes the butter and cream into a sauce. Do not rinse.
- A tea-cup creamUsually reckoned at about 3/4 cup in period measure. Period cream was not standardised; heavy cream gives the richest result, and half that amount gives a less rich dish that still coats well.
- The cheeseNo variety is named; a firm domestic cheese of the cheddar type is the likeliest thing to hand in an Ohio kitchen of this date. Grate it over the hot dish and it will melt in; a few minutes under the broiler gives a browned top if you want one.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) came out of Ohio church-society circles — its predecessor, the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book (1876), came from the ladies of the First Congregational Church of Marysville, Ohio — and it was compiled from contributions signed with initials like Mrs. S. R. T. Macaroni reached American tables mainly as hard imported Italian tubes sold by the pound in dry-goods stores, which is why so many recipes of the period begin by soaking it. The combination of macaroni, cream and grated cheese was already long established in English cookery and had been at American tables since at least Jefferson's day; the double boiler here reflects a kitchen where heat came from a wood range and was awkward to regulate.