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Spaghetti and Tomatoes
One-half pound of spaghetti, one-half pound of cheese, one small onion (cut fine), one-half can of tomatoes. Put spaghetti and onion in sauce pan, cover with boiling water and cook until done. Drain, put back in pan and add the tomatoes, one large tablespoon of butter, and salt to taste. Cut cheese fine, put in last and stir it constantly until the cheese is melted. Then it is ready to serve.
— Mrs. Frank Tice
A one-pan supper from an era before jarred sauce, and it works if you keep two things in check: the pasta's cooking time and the heat when the cheese goes in.
- Pull the pan off the heat for the cheeseHalf a pound of cheese stirred into a hot pan over a burner will break, going grainy and oily. Take the pan off the heat, add the cheese in handfuls, and stir until it melts in the residual warmth.
- "Cook until done" is not what it meantPeriod cookbooks commonly directed spaghetti to be boiled 20 minutes or more, to a soft, absorbent state. Modern dried spaghetti wants 8 to 10 minutes; check the box and taste.
- Half a can of tomatoesCanned tomato sizes of the period were not standardised, so the quantity is approximate; anywhere from a cup to two cups. Use canned diced or crushed tomatoes, drained of the thinnest juice or the dish will be soupy.
- The cheeseUnqualified "cheese" in an American community cookbook of this kind means plain store cheese, a firm mild yellow cheddar. A medium cheddar grated coarse is the closest thing; skip pre-shredded, which is dusted with anti-caking starch.
- RatioEqual weights of cheese and pasta is a rich proportion by current taste. Six ounces of cheese to the eight ounces of spaghetti gives a sauce that still coats without turning claggy.
- Cooking the onion with the pastaBoiling the minced onion alongside the spaghetti leaves it sweet but bland. Softening it in the tablespoon of butter first, then adding the tomatoes, gives noticeably more flavor for no extra pan.
- SaltSalt the boiling water as well as the finished dish. The cheese brings its own salt, so season at the end, after it has melted.
- YieldServes three as a main course, four as a side.
Spaghetti entered American community cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a curiosity and settled quickly into the register of cheap, filling church-supper food. What it almost never resembled was an Italian dish: recipes like this one treat the pasta as a substitute for macaroni, and the finish of butter, canned tomatoes and a mass of melted store cheese is straightforwardly the logic of macaroni and cheese with tomatoes stirred through. The reliance on canned tomatoes is the period marker. By the 1890s commercially canned tomatoes were among the cheapest and most widely stocked goods in a village grocery, which is why a contributor could write "one-half can" at all. Compiled volumes like this one preserve exactly these unshowy weeknight formulas.