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Macaroni with Tomatoes
Take three pints of beef soup, clear, and put one pound of macaroni in it, boil fifteen minutes, with a little salt; then take up the macaroni-which should have absorbed nearly all the liquid-and put it on a flat plate, and sprinkle grated cheese over it thickly, and pour over all plentifully a sauce made of tomatoes, well boiled, strained, and seasoned with salt and pepper.
A straightforward 1877 macaroni dish, cooked risotto-style in broth rather than water. Two things need attention: the pasta itself and the amount of liquid.
- Three pints of soup to a pound of pastaThat is 6 cups of broth to 1 lb of macaroni, about the ratio for absorption cooking. Keep extra hot stock at hand in case the pasta drinks the first lot before it is tender, so nothing scorches on the bottom of the pan.
- Fifteen minutes is for the macaroni of the periodNineteenth-century macaroni was thick-walled, often long tubes broken up, and it was expected to be soft. Modern dried elbows or penne will be done in 8-11 minutes; taste at eight and stop while there is still bite.
- "Beef soup, clear"This means a clear beef stock or bouillon, not a thickened soup. Unsalted or low-sodium stock is the safer choice here, since the liquid reduces almost to nothing and any salt in it concentrates.
- Salt with careBecause the broth is absorbed rather than drained away, salt the pasta water lightly, then correct at the end after the cheese goes on. Grated hard cheese brings its own salt.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" here most likely means a dry cheese for grating. Parmesan is the obvious modern stand-in, or a well-aged dry Cheddar, which was the more widely made cheese in America at the time.
- The tomato sauceBoiled, strained tomatoes seasoned only with salt and pepper: a plain passata reduced until it coats a spoon. Canned tomatoes work; cook them down hard, as a thin sauce will slacken the whole dish.
- Assembly and heatThe dish is served on a flat platter, not baked, so everything must be hot at the moment it comes together. Warm the plate, have the sauce simmering, and dress the macaroni immediately.
- YieldA pound of macaroni with sauce and cheese serves six as a side or four as a main course.
Macaroni reached American cookbooks well before tomatoes were routinely paired with it, and this recipe catches the two in the act of meeting. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping was compiled from Ohio housekeepers' contributions and first published in 1877. Here the macaroni is cooked in beef broth instead of water, so that it absorbs the liquid. The tomato sauce is deliberately plain - boiled, strained, salt and pepper, no garlic, no herbs, no long simmering with meat - treating the tomato as a sharp, wet seasoning rather than the base of a dish.