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Spaghetti
Spaghetti is a form of macaroni, but thread or tape shaped instead of pipe shaped. There are many ways of preparing it. A very simple one is to boil it in slightly salted water or plain stock, then to turn it into the dish for serving, and mix with each quarter pound a table-spoonful or more of grated Parmesan cheese. This is tossed lightly but quickly until the cheese melts, and has a cobwebby appearance. A spoonful of tomato conserve should then be stirred in, and the dish served at once. Cost of spaghetti, 3d. to 4d. per pound.
A bare-bones cacio e pomodoro from a British reference work that still treats spaghetti as a curiosity related to macaroni. The instructions are sound; they simply assume knowledge the modern cook has to supply.
- The hinge: heat and moistureThe cheese only goes "cobwebby" if the pasta is hot and slightly wet when it hits the bowl. Drain the spaghetti but keep a few tablespoons of the cooking water, and toss with the Parmesan immediately, off the heat, before adding the tomato.
- Cooking timeThe original gives none. Dried spaghetti needs 8-11 minutes in well-salted water depending on thickness; taste from about 7 minutes. Nineteenth-century pasta instructions commonly allowed much longer boiling, giving softer, more swollen strands than modern cooks expect.
- "Slightly salted"Under-salted by current standards. Reckon on roughly a tablespoon of salt per four quarts of water. Boiling in plain stock, the alternative offered here, gives a richer but cloudier result.
- Tomato conserveThis means concentrated tomato paste or a thick reduced tomato purée, not tinned chopped tomatoes and not jam. A spoonful of double-concentrate tomato paste, loosened with a little pasta water, is the direct equivalent.
- Parmesan quantityThe original allows "a table-spoonful or more" per quarter pound; the lower end is thin by modern taste. Two to three tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan per 4 oz of dry pasta gives the coating the description implies. Pre-grated cheese with anti-caking agents melts poorly and will not draw into threads.
- Quantity and yieldA quarter pound of dry spaghetti (about 115 g) is a generous single portion or two small ones. Scale the cheese and tomato in the same proportion.
- The price note3d. to 4d. per pound is pre-decimal British currency, threepence to fourpence, and is useful only as a period marker: spaghetti was a cheap dry store.
The entry places spaghetti under macaroni, as one shape among many of a dried Italian paste. Its tone is instructive rather than enthusiastic, defining the shape before describing what to do with it. The dressing given here, cheese tossed through hot pasta with a little concentrated tomato, may reflect a Neapolitan household treatment, though British cooks of the period more often baked macaroni with white sauce and cheese into something closer to a pudding. Tomato in a purchasable concentrated form was becoming widely available in tins and bottles by the late nineteenth century, which is why the recipe can call for a spoonful of it without further explanation.