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MACARONI (a la Pontiffe)
Boil eight ounces of long straight ribbon macaroni in the usual way, but fifteen minutes will be enough to swell it, which is all that is needed. Drain on a sieve, and when drained put a neat layer of it as a lining in a well-buttered mould; cover next with a quenelle forcemeat of fowl or rabbit, and fill the mould with game or poultry, boned and filleted, some larks, also boned, and rolled with thin bits of bacon inside each, and some delicate strips or pieces cut into rounds about the size of a shilling, distributed with egg-balls and button mushrooms, previously simmered in gravy, in the mould. Thicken the gravy, a little of which use to moisten the whole, cover with macaroni, and simmer, but do not boil, for an hour. Probable cost, 3d. to 4d. per pound.
A Victorian raised-mould dish of macaroni lining a filling of boned game and poultry. One of its named ingredients cannot legally be sourced today, and the notes below explain the terms rather than offer a working version.
- Larks are the problemSkylarks and their relatives were sold by the dozen in nineteenth-century markets and are protected across most of their range: in Britain under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and in North America under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. EU law regulates them under the Birds Directive, though some member states still permit hunting under derogation. In Britain, taking, selling or possessing them is an offence, and the dish as written depends on them. Use a current recipe if you want a macaroni timbale.
- What a quenelle forcemeat isRaw fowl or rabbit flesh pounded to a paste with panada and egg, used here as a binding layer between the pasta shell and the filling. It sets as it cooks and is what holds the mould together when turned out.
- Egg-ballsHard-boiled yolks pounded with raw yolk and a little flour, rolled into marbles and poached. They appear constantly in Victorian soups and raised dishes as a garnish; the term has otherwise disappeared.
- "The size of a shilling"A Victorian shilling was about 23-24 mm across, so slightly under an inch. The instruction means small coin-sized rounds, not a precise measure.
- Fifteen minutes of macaroniPeriod cookery books commonly gave macaroni a considerably longer boil. Here the time is shortened deliberately -- the recipe says fifteen minutes 'will be enough to swell it, which is all that is needed' -- since the pasta will go on cooking during the hour in the mould and need only soften enough to line it.
- Simmer, do not boilThe recipe specifies an hour's gentle simmering and no more; it does not say how the mould was to be heated, though a water bath would be the usual method for a lined mould of this kind. The concern is presumably that vigorous boiling would disturb the macaroni lining.
- The cost line"Probable cost, 3d. to 4d. per pound" is given per pound and cannot plausibly cover a filling of game birds and larks, so it appears to price the macaroni rather than the dish. Cassell's cost lines vary in what they cover, which is why the figure looks absurdly low here.
Macaroni came into English cookery as a luxury import long before it was an everyday food, and Victorian cookery books treat it as a construction material as much as a dish: lined into moulds, layered with cheese, or set round a filling to make a timbale that could be turned out whole at table. The grand name here may reflect the period habit, often noted though hard to document in any single case, of attaching ecclesiastical or courtly tags to dressed dishes, and the filling belongs to a tradition of small birds served whole, when larks were sold in quantity in London and provincial markets and appeared in pies, puddings and moulds. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for middle-class households with a cook, sits at the point where that kind of elaborate moulded work was still expected of a good kitchen but was already being simplified. The taste for songbirds did not last, which is why this recipe reads now as a document rather than a set of instructions.