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Haddock and Macaroni
1 lb. boiled haddock 1/2 pint (1 cup) white sauce ¼ lb. macaroni 2 small skinned tomatoes Seasoning of salt and pepper 3 pickled gherkins I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter Break the macaroni in pieces from one to one and a half inches long, put it into a pan of fast-boiling, salted water, add the butter, and boil until it is tender without being in the least mashed; drain and wash the macaroni in a little hot water.
A late-Victorian-to-Edwardian fish-and-pasta bake, built on cooked haddock and a plain white sauce. The quantities are workable once the abbreviations are read correctly, and the assembly is straightforward even where the original text is sparse.
- The macaroni quantityThe printed "14 lb. macaroni" cannot be right against 1 lb of fish; it is almost certainly 1/4 lb, roughly 4 oz or 115 g dry. That gives about the same cooked volume as the flaked haddock, which is the balance the dish wants.
- Half a pint of sauceThe book glosses it as 1 cup. Note that a half pint by the imperial measure is 10 fl oz while a cup is 8, so take the target as somewhere between about 240 and 285 ml of medium-thick white sauce. The 1 oz of butter in the list is accounted for separately, in the macaroni water.
- Boiled haddockStart from about 1 lb of skinned fillet, poached gently in milk or salted water until it just flakes, five to eight minutes depending on thickness. Overcooked haddock turns dry and cottony once it goes into the sauce as well. Flake it in generous pieces and check carefully for pin bones.
- Butter in the pasta waterThe recipe puts the butter into the boiling water rather than the dish; the usual reasoning offered for this is that it keeps the macaroni from sticking and the pan from boiling over. It does little in a large pan of water; if you want the butter in the dish, stir it into the sauce instead.
- Washing the macaroniRinsing in hot water after draining removes surface starch so the pieces stay separate in the sauce. Use hot, not cold, or the pasta chills and stiffens before it reaches the dish.
- Tomatoes and gherkinsSkin the tomatoes by scoring and dipping in boiling water for twenty seconds. Slice them and chop the gherkins small; their vinegar sharpness is the whole point against the bland sauce, so do not substitute sweet pickle.
- YieldNo yield is given. On 1 lb of fish and 4 oz of macaroni it would stretch to three or four.