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CHEESE, WITH MACARONI (another way) (Drop a quarter of a pound)
Drop a quarter of a pound of macaroni in some boiling milk and water, and let it simmer gently until is is quite tender but firm. Put four ounces of grated cheese in a breakfast-cupful of boiled cream or new milk, and place the mixture in a saucepan with a blade of mace, three or four grains of cayenne, a piece of butter, and a little salt. The cheese must be quite free from rind, and should be stirred constantly until it is quite melted, and we would recommend a mixture of cheese, such as Parmesan and Gruyere, as Parmesan, if used by itself, soon gets lumpy. When it is dissolved, add the boiled macaroni to it, first putting it in a sieve for two or three minutes to drain. Let it simmer for a few minutes longer, then put it into a dish, strew over it some finely-grated bread-crumbs, and brown in a hot oven, or with a salamander. Good white sauce may be substituted for the cream. Time, one hour and a half to boil the macaroni. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A straightforward cheese sauce and pasta, but two instructions in it belong to a different era of macaroni entirely.
- Ignore the boiling timeAn hour and a half reflects the thick, coarse, slow-drying macaroni of the period, not modern extruded dried pasta. Cook contemporary macaroni to the packet time, generally 8-11 minutes, and stop while it still has some resistance since it simmers again in the sauce.
- Milk and waterCooking the pasta in milk and water rather than plain water gives a softer, slightly sweeter result. Use roughly half and half, and watch it, as milk scorches on the pan bottom far more readily than water.
- A breakfast-cupfulBetween 8 and 10 fl oz, so call it a generous cup of cream or whole milk. "New milk" simply means fresh, unskimmed milk straight from the dairy.
- The cheese mixture is the pointParmesan alone has too little moisture and fat to emulsify smoothly and will string and clot, which is exactly the lumping the original warns about. Gruyere, or any good melting cheese, carries the sauce while the Parmesan supplies the flavour. Grate finely, add off a fierce heat, and stir until just melted.
- Mace and cayenneA blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, or a scrape of nutmeg. "Three or four grains" of cayenne is a literal pinch, meant for warmth rather than heat.
- Oven and salamanderThe book gives no temperature; a 'hot oven' is usually taken as somewhere in the region of 425-450F. The salamander was an iron plate heated red and held over the surface to brown it, so a modern grill or broiler is the closest equivalent and is faster than the oven for a dish already hot.
- White sauce alternativeThe suggested substitute is a plain bechamel, and it makes the more forgiving version: the flour stabilises the emulsion so the cheese is much less likely to split.
- YieldFour ounces of macaroni for four or five people is a Victorian side portion. As a main course this serves two, and the quantities scale straight up.
Macaroni arrived in British kitchens as a luxury of the Grand Tour, expensive enough in the eighteenth century that the fashionable young men who affected Italian tastes were mocked as "macaronis". By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s it had come well down in the world, and this dish costs one shilling and twopence. What survives from the grander version is the treatment, which is essentially a sauce of cheese melted into cream and seasoned with mace and cayenne rather than a flour-based sauce. The warning against Parmesan used alone is a genuinely useful piece of observed kitchen knowledge, and Gruyere is recommended alongside it.