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Cheese and Macaroni Balls
Chop two ounces of well-boiled macaroni into small pieces. Melt one ounce of butter, and stir into it one ounce of flour. Add one gill of milk, and stir till it boils. Add two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, the macaroni, and the yolk of a raw egg, and season well. Re-cook for a minute or two, turn the mixture on to a plate, and let it cool. When cold, shape into small balls, dip them in egg and bread-crumb, and fry to a nice brown in plenty of boiling fat. Drain on paper, and serve arranged in a pyramid on a lace paper, garnished with fried parsley. Probable cost, 10d. for twelve.
A thick panade of macaroni and Parmesan, chilled, rolled, breaded and deep-fried — the Victorian ancestor of the arancino. The whole thing depends on getting the base stiff enough to handle.
- The hinge: a very thick pasteOne ounce each of butter and flour to a single gill of milk is a roux-heavy paste, not a sauce, and it needs to be that stiff to hold a ball together. Cook it until it comes away from the pan in a mass, spread it thin on a plate, and chill it thoroughly — an hour in the refrigerator is better than the original's vague "when cold."
- A gillA quarter of an imperial pint: 5 fl oz, about 140 ml (a little over half a US cup).
- Weights in cupsOne ounce of flour is a scant quarter cup. Two ounces of grated Parmesan is roughly half to two-thirds of a cup. The macaroni is given as "two ounces of well-boiled macaroni," which may mean two ounces weighed dry (about half a cup dry, near a cup cooked) or two ounces already cooked; the recipe does not say which.
- "Well-boiled" macaroniHere it means genuinely soft, not al dente — the pieces are chopped small and must yield with the paste rather than tear it apart when rolled. Cook a minute or two past the packet time.
- Frying fat and temperature"Plenty of boiling fat" means deep fat, hot enough to brown quickly; in modern terms this is usually taken as around 350-375F. Too cool and the crumb soaks; too hot and the coating browns before the inside softens. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Season wellThe instruction is doing real work. Parmesan brings salt but the flour paste is bland; add salt, white pepper, a scrape of nutmeg and a little cayenne, and taste the mixture before it cools.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs completely and give them only a few seconds in the fat — wet parsley spits violently, and overcooked parsley turns black and bitter.
- YieldTwelve small balls, as the costing implies: a savoury course or a hot canapé for four, not a main dish. Double everything if you want them to go round a table.
The technique is a fried croquette on a flour-and-butter base, a pattern the English kitchen took from French cookery and applied widely; macaroni, sold dry by the grocer, was the cheap padding that turned two ounces of cheese into twelve mouthfuls. Small hot cheese dishes of this kind served as the savoury, the salty course that closed a Victorian dinner after the sweet. Parmesan was a common cooking cheese for such dishes in Britain, imported hard and grated fine because it kept well. The costing of tenpence a dozen is the book's habitual note for a housekeeper checking a menu against a budget.