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Italian Macaroni
Place two pounds of beef, well larded with strips of salt pork, and one or two chopped onions, in a covered kettle on the back of the stove, until it throws out its juice and is a rich brown; add a quart of tomatoes seasoned with pepper and salt, and allow the mixture to simmer for two or three hours. Take the quantity of macaroni desired and boil in water for twenty minutes, after which put one layer of the boiled macaroni in the bottom of a pudding dish, cover with some of the above mixture, then a layer of grated cheese, and so on in layers till the dish is filled, having a layer of cheese on the top; place in the oven an hour, or until it is a rich brown. Commence early in the morning to prepare this dish.
This is a beef and tomato ragu layered with pasta and cheese, baked — recognisable as an ancestor of baked ziti. Most of the recipe holds up; the pasta timing does not.
- Cut the macaroni's boil in halfShorten the macaroni's boil -- Twenty minutes plus an hour in the oven gives mush. Boil it to just short of al dente, 6 to 8 minutes for modern dried macaroni, and let the bake finish it.
- "Back of the stove" means low heatOn a wood range the back was the cool zone. The instruction is to sweat the beef and onions gently in their own juices until the fond browns — a covered pot over low heat, or a 300F oven, for the better part of an hour.
- Larding with salt porkTwo pounds of a lean pot roast cut — chuck or bottom round — was pierced and threaded with salt pork strips for fat and salt. Cubing the beef and rendering 2 to 3 oz of diced salt pork or pancetta first accomplishes the same thing with less knifework.
- A quart of tomatoesOne 28 to 32 oz can of whole or crushed tomatoes with their juice. Home-canned tomatoes may have been thinner than modern canned product, in which case the sauce here will come out slightly richer.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. 350F for the hour, covered for the first 40 minutes so the top cheese does not scorch before the interior heats through, then uncovered for the "rich brown".
- The cheeseThe recipe does not say which cheese. A firm aged Cheddar or a Parmesan both work; Parmesan browns and stays crisp, Cheddar gives a softer, oilier top.
- Shred or slice the beefAfter two or three hours of simmering the meat will fall apart. Pull it into the sauce before layering — whole slices of pot roast between layers of macaroni make the dish hard to serve.
- YieldWith a pound of macaroni this fills a 9x13 dish and feeds 8 to 10. The sauce alone is more than enough for that much pasta.
- Why start earlyThe closing line is practical scheduling, not caution: three hours of simmering plus an hour of baking. The sauce is better made a day ahead.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled from contributed receipts by Ohio housewives, is said to file macaroni under Vegetables rather than giving it a chapter of its own — in keeping with the period habit of grouping starchy "farinaceous" dishes with the plainer accompaniments to meat. Macaroni had been available to well-off American households since the early 1800s, imported dried in boxes and generally treated as an English cook would treat it: boiled soft, layered with cheese, baked. Calling this one "Italian" flags the departure — the tomato, and a long-simmered meat sauce instead of a milk or cream binding. That the tomatoes are called for by the quart, rather than fresh by the pound, points to an era in which a quart jar of put-up tomatoes was a winter staple in any Midwestern cellar.