Will Deming
FORTY-MINUTE
Melt ¼ lb. of butter in an iron pot; chop up one onion, four sections of garlic. As butter browns add a little water. Let this cook 15 minutes; add one pound of lean ground beef, and 1/2 cup of water; let it cook 15 minutes. Strain one large can of tomatoes, one can of mushrooms; add and cook 10 minutes. Thicken with flour. Take 2 lbs. of spaghetti (the Italian, as the American spaghetti must be washed after cooking); put it in a large pot and boil in salt water; don't break the spaghetti-stand it up in water and let it get discouraged. Cook this from 35 to 40 minutes.
Put it on a large platter. On the table have the grated Roman cheese. The spaghetti is put on the individual plates first, then covered with cheese, add the sauce and serve. This is enough for eight people. Sincerely yours, Will Deming.
A straightforward Italian-American meat sauce from a stage performer's contribution, with one instruction that no modern cook should follow and one number that is almost certainly a printer's error.
- "14 lb. of butter"This is a typesetting error for 1/4 lb, that is, one stick or 4 oz. Fourteen pounds of butter in a sauce for eight is not a plausible reading.
- Do not boil spaghetti 40 minutesThirty-five to forty minutes turns dried pasta to paste. Dried spaghetti needs 8-11 minutes depending on thickness; taste it. The recipe gives 35 to 40 minutes for the pasta, though the sauce timings (15, 15 and 10 minutes) also come to forty, so it is unclear which the title counts.
- The "American spaghetti must be washed"The distinction suggests domestic pasta of the period was thought softer and starchier than imported, and rinsing was presumably meant to stop it gluing together. Neither imported nor domestic pasta needs rinsing today, and rinsing costs you the starch that helps sauce cling.
- Roman cheesePecorino Romano, the hard sheep's-milk grating cheese. Grate it fresh; about 4-6 oz for eight servings. Parmigiano is a milder substitute.
- One large can of tomatoesCan sizes were not yet standardised, but a "large can" of this period was probably in the region of a modern 28 oz can. "Strain" may mean draining off the packing liquid, or pressing the tomatoes through a sieve to remove seeds and skins, as was also common; the mushrooms would simply be drained.
- Thicken with flourNo amount is given. A tablespoon or two whisked with a little cold water and stirred in, then simmered a couple of minutes, is enough for a sauce this size. Modern practice would more often just reduce it.
- "Let it get discouraged"Deming means standing the long strands in the pot and letting the submerged ends soften until the rest slides in. Sound method, and still the way to avoid breaking the pasta.
- YieldEight, as stated, though two pounds of dried pasta is generous even for eight. One and a half pounds is closer to modern portions with this quantity of sauce.
This comes from Celebrated Actor Folks' Cookeries, Mabel Rowland's 1916 collection of recipes solicited from stage performers of the day, which is less a cookbook than an autograph album with ingredients. Deming's choice is telling. In 1916 spaghetti was still slightly exotic in American home kitchens, associated with Italian immigrant restaurants, and the recipe's careful distinction between "the Italian" and "the American spaghetti" reflects a period when the domestic product was thought noticeably inferior. The serving order he specifies -- pasta, then cheese, then sauce over the top -- seems deliberate rather than a mistake, and the joke about letting the spaghetti "get discouraged" is exactly the sort of line the book was collected for.