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Macaroni with Butter
Boil a sufficient quantity as directed above. Pour over it melted butter, and a dash of pepper, and serve in place of potatoes.
A two-line side dish that depends entirely on the boiling instruction on the preceding page, which the reader of a single recipe no longer has. The rest is technique.
- "As directed above"The instruction points back to the preceding boiling recipe, which is not reproduced here; it presumably amounts to macaroni boiled in water until tender and drained. Period directions for macaroni often ran long, upwards of fifteen minutes, where modern dried macaroni needs 8-10 minutes. Cook to just tender and drain immediately.
- QuantityNo amount is given. Figure 2 oz (about 1/2 cup) dry macaroni per person as a side, which puts a standard 1 lb box at eight servings.
- The macaroni itselfIn 1911 macaroni usually meant long hollow tubes broken into lengths, not the small elbows the word suggests now. Either works; the long cut holds melted butter better.
- ButterMelted, not browned. Roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons per pound of cooked pasta. Add it to the pasta while both are hot and toss so it coats rather than pools.
- A spoonful of the waterThe recipe does not say it, but a tablespoon or two of the starchy cooking water tossed in with the butter will emulsify it into a light sauce instead of a slick.
- Seasoning"a dash of pepper" most likely means black pepper, added over the butter as the recipe directs. Whether the boiling water was salted is not stated on this page; season it, since no other salt appears in the dish.
- ServingThe recipe says explicitly that it stands in for potatoes, so it goes out plain and hot. Cheese belongs to the separate macaroni-and-cheese recipes, not to this one.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, who cooked in Chicago restaurants, spent years as a Pullman dining-car chef serving private railway cars, and later ran the kitchen of a steel-company laboratory. His book is generally recognized as one of the first cookbooks published by an African American author. A dish this spare tells you something about its context: macaroni had become cheap and widely available in American groceries by the turn of the century, and Estes files it among the miscellaneous side dishes as a straightforward substitute for potatoes on a plate — the kind of quiet, reliable accompaniment a professional cook needs in volume, dressed with nothing but butter and pepper.