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Spaghetti, with Tomato Rolls
Boil half a pound of spaghetti in any white stock from poultry or veal. When done lay it in a stewpan, and pour over it half a gill of cream and half a gill of the stock in which it was boiled. Cover, and let it absorb this. Meanwhile get ready about half a dozen tomato rolls (see TOMATO ROLLS, ITALIAN). Take a second pan, slice into it two ounces of any rich English cheese, and the same weight of grated Parmesan, and of butter; pour in a gill of the stock from the spaghetti, and shake the pan (do not stir) until all the ingredients are well blended. Pour this over the spaghetti in a dish as hot as possible, and serve at once. The rolls are to be placed round the spaghetti. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A late-Victorian cheese-and-cream spaghetti built on poultry stock rather than water, finished as an emulsion in the pan. Two details carry it: the stock and the fact that the cheese sauce is shaken, never stirred.
- Gills and poundsA British gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill is about 2 1/2 fl oz (5 tablespoons) of cream and the same of stock; the cheese sauce takes a full gill, 5 fl oz (a generous half cup). Half a pound of spaghetti is 225 g.
- Boiling in stockYou need enough liquid to cook the pasta freely — about 2 quarts of light chicken or veal stock, unsalted or lightly salted, since it reduces into the sauce twice over. Stock from a poached bird works; a strongly seasoned commercial stock will read as salty once the Parmesan goes in.
- Cooking timeThe recipe says only 'when done', and pasta of this period was probably taken softer than we would now. Dried spaghetti today wants 8-10 minutes, drained just short of tender, because it goes on to absorb cream and stock in the covered stewpan.
- Do not stirThe cheese, butter and stock are emulsified by shaking the pan over gentle heat. Stirring, or letting it reach a boil, shears the emulsion and the cheese pulls into strings with fat pooling around it. Keep the heat low and keep the pan moving.
- "Any rich English cheese"A mature farmhouse Cheddar, Cheshire or double Gloucester — something with fat and bite. Note that the recipe has the English cheese sliced, and only the Parmesan grated.
- StewpanA wide, heavy saucepan, not a baked-dish casserole. Width helps here: the pasta should sit in a shallow layer to take up the cream evenly.
- The tomato rollsA separate entry in the same book, not reproduced here, so their exact composition cannot be read off this page; the name suggests a roll filled with a seasoned tomato mixture. Halved roasted tomatoes or stuffed baked tomatoes stand in without upsetting the balance of the plate.
- Serve very hotThe insistence on a dish "as hot as possible" is structural, not fussy — the sauce is loose and will set into a mass on a cold plate. Warm the serving dish and the plates.
- YieldHalf a pound of pasta with six rolls serves three as a main course, four as a middle course.
Cassell's places this among a run of spaghetti and macaroni dishes that entered English cookery books through the second half of the nineteenth century, when dried Italian pasta became a reliable grocery import rather than a curiosity. The treatment is characteristic of the moment: Italian in name and in the Parmesan, thoroughly English in method, with the pasta boiled in white stock and enriched with cream, butter and a hard local cheese in the manner of a macaroni-cheese. The "probable cost, 1s. 6d." is a standing feature of the dictionary, aimed at a household cook working to a weekly budget and answerable for it. Cooking pasta in broth instead of water is older than the book and still current in parts of Italy.