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Macaroni with Cheese
Break macaroni into two-inch lengths, or use spaghetti; drop into rapidly boiling water, the motion of the water will prevent the pieces of macaroni from sticking together. Boil for three-quarters of an hour, drain and throw it into cold water to blanch for fifteen minutes. Put it back into the saucepan with a pint of strained tomatoes, a level teaspoon of salt, and a saltspoon of pepper. Stew slowly until the macaroni has absorbed nearly all the tomatoes; then add half a pound of chopped American cheese. Stir carefully; do not break the macaroni, and when the cheese is melted add half a cup of cream or two tablespoons of butter, and then serve.
— Mrs. George L. Cowles
A stovetop macaroni and cheese built on tomato rather than white sauce, and the timings belong to an era of much harder dried pasta. Two things need adjusting before anything else: the boiling time and the cheese.
- The forty-five minute boilLong cooking times for macaroni were common in cookbooks of this period. Modern dried pasta reaches al dente in 8 to 12 minutes; boiling it three-quarters of an hour gives paste. Cook it a minute or two short of the package time, since it will stew further in the tomato.
- Blanching in cold waterThe recipe sends the drained macaroni into cold water "to blanch" for fifteen minutes, which would halt the cooking and rinse the surface. With modern pasta it is unnecessary and it dulls the surface the sauce needs to cling to. Drain and go straight to the pan.
- American cheeseIn this period the phrase means domestic factory cheddar, not the processed slices sold under that name now. Use a sharp or medium yellow cheddar, half a pound grated, and take the pan off direct heat before stirring it in so it melts rather than splits.
- Strained tomatoesA pint of tomatoes pressed through a sieve to remove skin and seed — passata is the nearest modern equivalent, about 2 cups. Canned crushed tomatoes work if you sieve them; whole peeled tomatoes blitzed and strained are closer still.
- A saltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The level teaspoon of salt assumes unsalted pasta water, so taste before adding all of it.
- Stewing down the tomatoThe instruction to stew slowly until the macaroni has absorbed nearly all the tomatoes is the heart of the dish. Keep it at a bare simmer and stir with a folding motion; hard boiling will both break the pasta and reduce the sauce past the point where the cheese can emulsify into it.
- Cream or butterHalf a cup of cream or two tablespoons of butter, added last, is what pulls the melted cheddar and tomato together into a sauce. Do not let it boil after this point.
- YieldThe recipe never states how much macaroni to use; half a pound of cheese and a pint of tomatoes would suit somewhere in the region of a pound of dry macaroni, giving six to eight servings as a supper dish, more as a side. It is served straight from the pan, not baked.
Macaroni was well established in American cooking long before this book, but two versions competed on the table: the English-descended baked dish bound with a cream or white sauce, and the tomato-based one that follows Italian practice more closely. This receipt sits squarely in the second camp, at a time when commercially boxed dried macaroni and canned tomatoes were both cheap, shelf-stable, and sold by the same grocers. The reference to "American cheese" is a period marker worth noticing: it distinguished domestic factory-made cheddar from imported English and Swiss cheeses, and carried none of the processed connotation the term took on later. The long boiling time and the cold-water blanch suggest a product noticeably tougher than what is sold now.