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Macaroni Pudding
Break four ounces of macaroni into lengths, and boil in a quart of water in an uncovered saucepan for fifteen minutes. Drain, and boil again with a pint of milk and two ounces of sugar till tender but unbroken. When cool add two beaten eggs, and flavour pleasantly. Put the mixture into a buttered dish, and bake till brown. For a superior pudding, take additional eggs and stir in a glass of noyau or a little brandy. A little orange marmalade or apricot jam may, if liked, be put in the dish under the macaroni.
A Victorian milk-and-macaroni custard, closer to a baked rice pudding than to anything savoury. The measurements are workable as written; the one place it goes wrong is the eggs.
- Cool the macaroni firstThe instruction "when cool add two beaten eggs" is the hinge. Stir eggs into hot milky macaroni and they scramble into threads. Let it drop below about 140F — warm to the finger, not hot — before the eggs go in.
- The macaroniNineteenth-century macaroni came as long hollow pipes, hence "break into lengths." Modern elbow macaroni needs no breaking; 4 oz dry is about 1 cup of elbows. Long tubes such as ziti or bucatini snapped into 2-inch pieces are closer to the original.
- Why boil twiceThe first fifteen minutes in plain water is usually explained as washing off surface starch so the milk does not thicken into paste; the recipe itself gives no reason. The second boil, in a pint of milk with the sugar, is where the pasta finishes -- go by feel and stop while the pieces still hold their shape.
- "Bake till brown"The recipe gives no oven temperature or time. 350F for 30 to 40 minutes in a buttered 1-quart dish works. It is done when the custard is just set at the centre and the top has taken colour; carryover heat will finish it. Overbaked, it weeps.
- A glassThe recipe says only "a glass"; a wineglassful in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, though the measure varied. That much brandy in a pint of milk custard is noticeable but not aggressive.
- NoyauA sweet liqueur flavoured with stone-fruit kernels, sold today as crme de noyaux and not widely stocked. Amaretto gives a similar almond-and-stone-kernel note; the brandy alternative the recipe offers is the easier route.
- "Flavour pleasantly"Cassell's assumes the cook's judgement. Grated lemon or orange zest, a split vanilla pod steeped in the milk, or a grating of nutmeg over the top all suit it; keep to one or two so the jam layer is not lost.
- The jam layerSpread the marmalade or apricot jam thinly across the bottom of the buttered dish before the macaroni goes in, so it caramelises rather than floating up through the custard.
- YieldServes four to six as written, and is better warm than hot. It reheats acceptably but the browned top does not survive it.
Baked macaroni puddings were a fixture of English cookery books through the nineteenth century, sitting alongside rice, sago, tapioca and semolina puddings in a family of cheap milk-and-starch desserts designed to stretch a small amount of egg and sugar across a household. Macaroni reached British kitchens as an Italian import, expensive at first and treated as something of a delicacy, which is why a "superior" version dressed with noyau or brandy makes sense as the version for company.