Louis Mann
SPAGHETTI SAUCE
Put in pan on top of stove one can tomatoes (Italian), a pinch sugar, a dash of cinnamon, pepper, salt and onion to taste, 1 tablespoon butter, a little chopped celery and parsley, some dried mushrooms, a small piece of chicken (chopped), and one carrot and a crust of bread cut in small pieces.
Let boil until thick; strain and put back again to boil until thick.
Boil spaghetti hard for about twenty minutes, drain off water and put on a large platter. Mix thoroughly through it a large lump of butter, then add the tomato sauce and sprinkle plenty of grated parmesan cheese on top.
This is called "Spaghetti Louis Mann" in many places, both here and abroad.
Louis Mauи
CRAB AND TOMATO SALAD
Remove meat from hard-shell crabs until there is a cupful. Add a cup of chopped celery and six small tomatoes, peeled and cut in quarters. Mix with mayonnaise sauce and serve on lettuce leaves.
The crabs are cooked by putting them into boiling water which has been seasoned with salt and red pepper. When the shells turn red they are done.
Chill crabs and all other ingredients for the salad.
Two dishes from one page: a long-cooked strained tomato sauce and a cold crab salad. The sauce is the interesting one, and its method is older than its ingredients suggest.
- The hinge: it is a strained sauceEverything here (chicken, carrot, celery, bread crust, mushrooms) is flavouring, not texture. The reduction is cooked down, pushed through a sieve, then reduced again. Do not skip the straining and expect a chunky sauce; the bread crust was most likely there to give body once the solids are gone, though the recipe does not say so.
- "One can tomatoes (Italian)"Can sizes of the period varied, roughly 20 to 32 oz; one modern large can of whole peeled plum tomatoes is a reasonable substitute. Crush them by hand before they go in the pan.
- Dried mushroomsPorcini are the likeliest reading, though the recipe does not specify. Soak a small handful in warm water for 20 minutes and add the strained soaking liquid to the pan; it does more for the sauce than the mushrooms themselves.
- "A small piece of chicken (chopped)"Read this as a few ounces of raw chicken, thigh or wing, bone included if you like. It is there to enrich the sauce and comes out at the sieve. Given the long reduction and straining, it will be thoroughly cooked.
- Spaghetti boiled twenty minutesThat was normal for the period and produces mush by current standards. Modern dried spaghetti wants 8 to 11 minutes in heavily salted water. The instruction to toss the drained pasta with butter before saucing is worth keeping.
- Boiling crabs by colourHard-shell crab shells turn red well before the meat is set. Whole blue crabs need roughly 12 to 15 minutes in hard-boiling salted water, and should be chilled thoroughly before picking, as the recipe rightly insists.
- Crab quantityA cupful of picked meat is roughly 5 to 8 oz, which if blue crabs are used means something like six to eight average ones. Lump crabmeat from the fish counter substitutes directly.
- YieldThe sauce should dress roughly a pound of spaghetti, serving about four. The salad, as written, would serve about four as a first course.
Louis Mann (1865-1931) was a New York stage comedian best known for German-dialect roles, and like several performers in this book he is credited with a dish that restaurants had begun listing under his name. The technique itself is thoroughly Italian and would seem to be older than the dish's name - a sugo reduced twice and passed through a sieve, with a crust of bread thrown in for body. The crab salad, a cold composed salad on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise, belongs to the same years.