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Chicken and Macaroni
Boil a chicken in the usual manner. Take half a pound of pipe macaroni, and boil it in water with a lump of butter in it. When it has boiled a quarter of an hour, drain it, and substitute milk for the water, with a large onion stuck with cloves, and a little salt and pepper. Boil until the macaroni is tender but unbroken, then grate over it a quarter of a pound of Parmesan cheese. Lay the chicken, which ought to be just cooked, on a dish, put the macaroni and cheese over it, and serve as hot as possible. Time to boil the macaroni the second time, half an hour; to boil the chicken, half an hour. Sufficient for four persons. Probable cost, chicken, 2s. 6d.
A Victorian assembly dish: poached fowl draped in macaroni cooked in spiced milk and finished with Parmesan. The one thing to fix is the pasta timing, which will reduce modern dried macaroni to paste.
- Pipe macaroniThe long hollow tubes sold by the pound, thicker than modern elbows. Ziti or bucatini are the closest current equivalents; elbow macaroni will work but loses the point of "tender but unbroken".
- The two boilingsNineteenth-century macaroni was a hard, slow-cooking dried paste that could take 45 minutes in total. Modern dried pasta cannot. Give it about 5 minutes in water, then finish it in the infused milk for 6 to 8 minutes until just tender, tasting as you go.
- The milk stage is the flavourDo not skip it or substitute stock. The milk with the clove-stuck onion is what seasons the pasta from inside, and it thickens slightly with released starch into a light sauce. Keep it at a bare simmer; milk at a rolling boil will catch and scorch.
- Onion stuck with clovesAn onion clouté: peel a large onion and press 4 to 6 whole cloves into it. Lift it out before serving. Half an onion is plenty for the quantity of milk needed here.
- Boiling the chickenHalf an hour suits the small, young fowl the book assumes. A modern 3 1/2 to 4 lb bird poached whole needs roughly 60 to 75 minutes at a bare simmer, and the thickest part of the thigh should read 165F with the probe kept clear of the bone. "Just cooked" is the instruction that matters -- a boiled bird held too long goes stringy.
- CheeseA quarter pound of Parmesan is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups finely grated, and it is a generous amount for half a pound of pasta. Grate it fine and add off the heat so it melts into the milk rather than seizing into threads.
- ServingFour portions. There is no browning step, so the dish depends entirely on heat: warm the platter, carve or joint the bird at the table, and send it out immediately. The poaching liquid makes a good base for soup the next day.
Macaroni reached English tables as a luxury import and stayed slightly foreign in character well into the nineteenth century, which is why so many Victorian recipes for it are built on milk, butter and Parmesan rather than tomato. Cooking pasta in milk with an onion clout errous is the flavour base shared with a b errousamel, though a b errousamel is defined by its roux, which this dish has none of; and the pairing with boiled fowl reflects a kitchen where a plainly poached bird was the standard vehicle for whatever rich garnish was to hand. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was reissued for decades, and its habit of quoting probable cost -- here 2s. 6d. for the chicken -- sat alongside the recipe itself.