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Cereals and Flour Paste: Macaroni
Macaroni Siciliana (Italian recipe). 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 tablespoonful butter, 2 pounds beef, 1 quart tomatoes, Bay leaf, 3 cloves, MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK 1 pound macaroni, 1 pound grated Swiss cheese.
Slice very thin the onion and carrot; put in a pot with the butter and let it fry, then put in the beef that has been cut in thick slices. Stir until it has browned nicely, add the tomatoes, bay leaf, cloves, salt, and peppers to taste. Stew slowly for two hours or more, till the sauce gets thick. Strain through a sieve until the sauce is free from the meat.
Take the macaroni and boil for twenty minutes, salt to taste. Drain off the water, and put it in a large, deep dish; pour over it the sauce and put in grated cheese. Mix all thoroughly, and serve hot. Macaroni Ravioli (Italian recipe). package macaroni, Parmesan cheese, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 12 chicken livers (parboil), 2 stalks celery, 1 onion, carrot, + turnip, Pepper and salt.
Mince the livers and vegetables fine, and put them in a saucepan to cook in a little butter. Blanch the macaroni; add pepper and salt and let it drain. Lay some macaroni in a baking dish, then a layer of the liver and vegetables, then the cheese, and so on till the dish is full enough.
End with a layer of cheese. Set the dish in the oven and let it cook for a few minutes. Brown on top and serve very hot.
Macaroni à la Napolitaine (Italian recipe). 1 pound macaroni, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 onion, 4 tablespoonfuls grated Parmesan cheese, Pepper and salt, 1 cupful cream, Put the macaroni into boiling water, add butter, salt, and onion stuck with cloves. Boil for three quarters of an hour; then drain the macaroni and put into a saucepan with cheese, nutmeg, salt, and cream.
Let stew gently a few minutes, and serve very hot.
Macaroni with Tomatoes.
Three Italian pasta dishes as an American household manual understood them around the turn of the century, with a fourth heading cut off mid-page. The cooking is sound; the pasta timings are not.
- Boil the macaroni far lessTwenty minutes is what the Siciliana asks, and three quarters of an hour in the Napolitaine is longer still; both suit the thick, dry macaroni of the period. Modern dried pasta needs 8-12 minutes; check the box and stop at the point of resistance, since the Ravioli finishes in the oven and the Napolitaine stews on in cream.
- The Siciliana sauce is a strained meat sugoTwo pounds of beef in thick slices are browned, stewed into the tomato for two hours or more, then removed. What you serve is the sauce; the beef can be kept back for a second course or the next day's hash. Do not skip the browning, which is where the colour and depth come from.
- A quart of tomatoesThat is roughly two 14-oz cans with their juice, or about 2 lb of fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped. Canned plum tomatoes give the closest result to the period product.
- Swiss cheese hereProbably Gruyere or a domestic imitation of it, of the kind sold in American groceries at the time. Parmigiano-Reggiano or a mix of the two is closer to what the dish is reaching for; a pound is generous, and half will do for a pound of macaroni.
- "Ravioli" is a misnomerThere is no pasta parcel anywhere in it. The name is being used loosely for a layered baked dish of macaroni, minced chicken liver and cheese, closer to a timballo. "Blanch the macaroni" means boil it briefly, well short of done, since it finishes in the oven.
- Ambiguous quantities in the RavioliThe original reads "1 onion, carrot, + turnip" and "package macaroni" -- the fractions have dropped out of the printing and cannot be recovered honestly. Assume a small onion, one carrot and a small turnip, and about 1 lb of macaroni. Twelve chicken livers is roughly 1 lb; parboil them 3-4 minutes before mincing.
- "A few minutes" in the ovenThe dish is assembled from hot components, so it only needs to heat through and brown. The book gives no temperature; a hot oven, around 400F, for ten minutes or so, or the broiler at the end, will give the crust the recipe asks for.
- Napolitaine: the onion is a flavouringIt is stuck with cloves and boiled with the pasta, then discarded -- the ingredient list omits the cloves and the nutmeg that the method calls for. A cupful of cream with 4 tablespoons of Parmesan makes a loose sauce; stew it gently and it will tighten as it coats.
- YieldThe Siciliana and the Napolitaine each serve six to eight as written; the Ravioli, six.
Recipes like these mark a stage in Italian food's arrival in mainstream American household manuals, following the great wave of southern Italian immigration after 1880 and filtered through cooks who had never seen the originals. The tells are everywhere: Gruyere standing in for Parmesan, macaroni boiled to softness, and a layered casserole labelled "ravioli" because the compiler knew the word but not the dish. The Siciliana is nonetheless a genuine and recognisable thing -- a long-stewed meat sugo whose beef is lifted out and whose sauce dresses the pasta, a pattern still followed across southern Italy, where the sauce and the meat are served as separate courses from one pot. The line "Mrs. Curtis's Cookbook" that has floated into the middle of the ingredient list is a running head from the book's own pages, caught up in transcription.