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Eggs with Macaroni
1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) butter. 1/2 pint (1 cup) white sauce. 4 hard cooked eggs ¼ lb. spaghetti I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (1 oz.) grated cheese 1/2 pint (I cup) white sauce 1 tablespoonful finely chopped parsley Salt and pepper Break the spaghetti into a saucepan of fast boiling water, add one teaspoonful of butter, and cook it until tender, then drain. Thickly butter a fireproof dish, put in a layer of spaghetti, then a layer of sliced hard cooked eggs; dust these with a little salt and pepper.
Next put in more spaghetti, then more slices of egg,
A simple layered bake of pasta, sliced hard-cooked eggs and white sauce, finished with cheese. The quantities are small — this is a supper dish for two, three at a stretch.
- The weight of pastaThe quantity is printed as "14 lb." but is meant to be a quarter pound, about 4 oz or 115 g dry spaghetti. That is the right proportion for 1 cup of white sauce and four eggs.
- Heaping tablespoonfulsThe book helpfully gives ounces: 1 oz butter (2 tablespoons by modern measure) and 1 oz grated cheese, roughly a quarter to a third of a cup loosely packed. Old "heaping" spoonfuls ran considerably larger than today's level ones.
- Half a pint of white sauceAn Imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, though the parenthetical "1 cup" suggests the American 8 oz. Either works; make the sauce with 1 to 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour to a cup of milk -- nearer 2 if you want it to hold the layers together -- and season it well, since the pasta and eggs bring almost no flavour of their own.
- "Fireproof dish"An earthenware or glazed casserole that will go from oven to table. A 1-quart gratin or baking dish is the modern equivalent; butter it heavily, as instructed, or the pasta welds to the sides.
- Don't fully cook the spaghettiThe book says cook until tender, but it will bake again in the sauce, so draining it a minute short keeps the finished dish from turning to paste. The teaspoon of butter in the boiling water was commonly held to stop the pot boiling over and the strands clumping; a good-sized pot of water does the same job.
- Hard-cooked eggsSlice them with a wet knife or an egg slicer so the yolks stay whole. Eggs cooked a day ahead and chilled slice far more cleanly than warm ones.
- Finishing the dish, since the text breaks offThe pattern is established: alternate spaghetti and seasoned egg slices, pour the white sauce over, scatter the cheese and parsley on top, and bake until bubbling and browned. The book gives no oven temperature or time; a hot oven until the top colours, or a few minutes under the broiler if everything went in hot, will do it.
Dishes like this one — pasta, eggs and a white sauce, all cheap and all pantry-stable — suited households cooking without much help, and belonged to a kind of cookery built around the fireproof earthenware dish that could be set in the oven and carried straight to the table, saving a serving platter and a good deal of washing up. The interchangeable use of macaroni and spaghetti in the title and the ingredient list reflects the period's habits, when English-language cookbooks used "macaroni" loosely for pasta generally.