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CHEESE, WITH MACARONI (another way) (Boil a quarter of a pound)
Boil a quarter of a pound of macaroni in milk and water until it is tender but firm, then drain it and place it at the bottom of a well-buttered pie-dish. Whisk well the yolks of two eggs, and stir into them a breakfast-cupful of cream and half a cupful of the liquid in which the macaroni was boiled. Stir this gently over the fire until it thickens, but on no account allow it to boil. Pour it on the macaroni, and sprinkle over the top three table-spoonfuls of grated cheese. Brown the mixture before a clear fire, or with a salamander, and serve. Time to boil the macaroni, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A custard-bound macaroni cheese rather than the roux-and-sauce version most cooks know. Two instructions in the original need attention before anything else: the boiling time, which belongs to a vanished kind of pasta, and the warning not to let the custard boil, which still stands.
- The hinge: do not boil the custardEgg yolks with cream will curdle a little above 180F. Cook it in a heavy pan over low heat, or in a bowl over simmering water, stirring until it coats the back of a spoon, then take it off at once.
- Ninety minutes is for old macaroniNinety minutes suits an older kind of macaroni -- nineteenth-century macaroni was generally thicker and harder-dried than the modern sort. Modern dried macaroni is tender but firm in 8-10 minutes; boiling it for an hour and a half would reduce it to paste.
- Boiling in milk and waterThe recipe gives no proportion; something like half and half is a reasonable reading. Watch it, as milk catches and boils over readily, and reserve the half-cupful of cooking liquid before draining, since it carries starch that helps the custard set.
- QuantitiesA quarter pound of macaroni is about 115g. A breakfast-cupful is a generous cup, roughly 8-10 fl oz; the half cupful of cooking liquid is about 4-5 fl oz.
- The salamanderA salamander was an iron plate heated red and held over the surface to brown it. A grill or broiler does the same work; set the dish 4-5 inches below a hot element for two or three minutes and watch it, as the egg mixture scorches quickly.
- The cheese'grated cheese' in cookery of this period commonly meant Parmesan or a hard dry cheese such as Cheddar, though Cassell's does not specify here. Three tablespoons is a thin veil, not a crust; it is there to brown, not to bind.
- SeasoningThe recipe gives none. Salt the cooking water, and season the custard with salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or a little mustard before it goes over the macaroni.
- Dish and yieldUse an ovenproof or flameproof dish, since a Victorian pie-dish went under direct heat. It serves four or five as a light supper or side, less as a main course.
Macaroni had been in English cookery books since the eighteenth century, when returning Grand Tourists made Italian pasta fashionable enough that a foppish young man was himself called a macaroni. By the time Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery was compiled in the 1870s the dish was thoroughly domesticated, and the book carries several versions of it under the heading of cheese rather than pasta, which says something about how the ingredient was understood: macaroni was the vehicle, cheese the point. This particular version binds the dish with an egg-and-cream custard instead of a flour-thickened sauce, a method closer to a savoury pudding. The stated cost of 1s. 8d. places it as a modest but not cheap dish; cream was the expensive item on the list.