Macaroni with White Sauce

A plain macaroni in bechamel, written when pasta was filed under cereals and treated as a starch course rather than an Italian dish. The recipe assumes you have already read the book's Boiled Macaroni entry.

• Boiling the macaroniTwo quarts of water with a tablespoon of salt is right for the quantity given. Dried macaroni of the period was often boiled 20 minutes or more; modern extruded pasta needs 8-11 minutes, and the package time is a better guide than any old cookbook.
• QuantityHalf a cup of dry macaroni is a small amount -- one to two servings as a side. The recipe's own proportion is 1 1/2 cups of sauce to half a cup of dry macaroni, which is a generously sauced dish; scale up in proportion.
• The sauce is a medium bechamelThe sauce -- Two tablespoons butter to two tablespoons flour to 1 1/2 cups milk, somewhat thinner than the standard medium white sauce of two tablespoons each per cup. Cook the butter and flour together a minute or two before adding liquid so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
• Scalded milkHeating the milk to just below a boil was routine in books of this period. With pasteurised milk it is optional, but warm milk still blends into the roux with less lumping.
• Adding the milk"Pour on slowly" is the hinge of the whole recipe. Add the first half-cup in a thin stream while whisking hard to get a smooth paste, then the rest more freely, and simmer until it coats a spoon.
• ReheatingFold the drained macaroni into the finished sauce over low heat just until hot through. Held longer, the pasta absorbs the sauce and the dish turns pasty; loosen with a splash of milk if that happens.
• SeasoningAs written the dish tastes of nothing but milk and salt. White pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are common additions to a white sauce, and grated cheese stirred in at the end turns it into macaroni and cheese.