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MACARONI (au Gratin)
Break up a pound of macaroni in three-inch lengths, boil as usual, and drain. Put into a stewpan a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, the macaroni, twelve ounces of Parmesan and Gruyere cheese mixed, and about a quarter of a pint of some good sauce-bechamel or white sauce. Move the stewpan and its contents over the fire until the macaroni has absorbed the butter, etc., then turn it out on a dish, which should be garnished with croutons. Pile it in the shape of a dome, cover with bread-raspings, a little clarified butter run through a colander, and brown very lightly with a salamander. Time, three-quarters of an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 3d. or 4d. per pound. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons.
A late-Victorian macaroni cheese built on a stovetop emulsion rather than a baked custard, and richer than most modern versions. A few of its terms and tools need translating.
- The hinge: keep the heat gentleThe cheese and butter are melted into the macaroni over direct heat, not baked. Too hot and 12 oz of hard cheese will break into strings and oil; keep the pan over low heat and stir constantly until the mixture is glossy and clinging.
- Quantities in modern terms1 lb macaroni, 4 oz (1 stick) butter, 12 oz mixed Parmesan and Gruyère, and a quarter pint of sauce — an imperial quarter pint is 5 fl oz, about 2/3 cup. The sauce is a moistener here, not a body of béchamel.
- "Boil as usual"Victorian instructions for macaroni generally call for long boiling, often twenty minutes or more, which leaves it soft. Cook to just short of al dente, since it will continue to soften in the buttered pan.
- Bread-raspingsRaspings were the browned crust of stale loaves rasped or grated fine — closest modern equivalent is dry, coarse breadcrumbs, or panko toasted pale gold in a dry pan.
- SalamanderA salamander was an iron plate heated red in the fire and held over the dish to glaze the top. Use an overhead broiler for a minute or two, watching closely, or a kitchen torch.
- Clarified butter through a colanderThe colander is simply a way of scattering the butter in fine drops over the crumbs rather than pooling it. A spoon flicked over the surface does the same job.
- YieldTen or twelve as a side or a course in a long Victorian dinner. As a main dish it will serve five or six, and the "probable cost" figures are of purely historical interest.
- CroûtonsThese are the fried bread sippets set around the base of the dome, not sprinkled on top; cut small triangles and fry in butter until crisp.
Macaroni reached British tables as an Italian luxury and by the mid-nineteenth century had become a staple of the genteel middle-class kitchen, cheap enough to feed a dozen but respectable enough for a dinner course — a contemporary price note of a few pence a pound shows how far it had fallen in status from the eighteenth-century macaroni served in aristocratic houses. The au gratin here means only the browned crumb crust, the term deriving from gratter, to scrape; such dishes were finished under a salamander or in the oven, and the technique of finishing on the stovetop and glazing at the last minute belongs to a period when household ovens were unreliable and a heated iron was the surer tool. The pairing of Parmesan with Gruyère is often said to reflect French practice of the era, Parmesan for savour and Gruyère for the melt, and it survives in modern macaroni cheese recipes that reach for a hard cheese alongside a stretchy one.