Macaroni with Egg Sauce

A one-line variation that depends entirely on the cream-sauce macaroni it points back to. Assume a white sauce of roughly equal butter and flour cooked together, then thinned with milk or cream and seasoned with salt, pepper and often a little nutmeg.

• Proportions to work fromThe recipe gives no quantities. For half a pound of macaroni, a sauce of 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and about 2 cups milk or thin cream is a workable standard medium white sauce. Anything thicker will stiffen as the dish stands.
• The eggs go in lastChop the hard-boiled eggs and fold them into the finished sauce off the heat. Held over a burner they toughen and the yolks turn the sauce grainy.
• Egg quantityThe recipe says one or two hard-boiled eggs, chopped. Two makes the dish noticeably eggy.
• Cook the macaroni shorter than the book saysCook the macaroni shorter than older instructions suggest -- Nineteenth-century recipes frequently call for twenty minutes or more in boiling salted water. Modern dried pasta wants 8-10 minutes, and slightly under is better here because it finishes in the sauce.
• Season above expectationsFlour-thickened milk sauce with egg is bland by current palates. Salt firmly, use white pepper, and consider mustard, a scrape of nutmeg or grated cheese, all of which sit comfortably within period practice.
• If it is bakedThe recipe does not call for baking, but should you finish it in the oven with crumbs on top, a moderate oven (around 350F) for about 20 minutes will heat it through; a brief blast under the broiler is more reliable for browning. Longer drying hardens the egg further.
• YieldAt the suggested proportions above, three to four servings as a main dish, six as a side.