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Macaroni Ragout
1½ package macaroni 2 tablespoonfuls chopped cooked ham 1 tablespoonful chopped 2 tablespoonfuls cornstarch 1/2 pint (I cup) milk chopped I oz. (I heaping tablespoonful) butter cooked meat or tongue 1/2 teaspoonful meat extract I oz. (4 tablespoonfuls) 1 tablespoonful chopped parsgrated cheese Salt, pepper, and dust of red pepper ley.
Break the macaroni into inch lengths, then boil it in plenty of boiling salted water until tender; drain and keep hot.
Mix the cornstarch with a little cold milk till smooth; boil the remaining milk, stir in the cornstarch, meat extract, seasonings, chopped parsley, cheese, chopped ham, chopped meat or tongue; allow to cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Pile the macaroni mixture in a buttered casserole and pour over it the cornstarch mixture.
Put in the oven to brown over and serve hot.
The ingredient list has come through the scanner with two columns interleaved, so read it as: macaroni, cornstarch, milk, butter, grated cheese, chopped ham, chopped cooked meat or tongue, meat extract, chopped parsley, salt, pepper and a dust of red pepper. The method itself is intact and straightforward.
- "1½ package macaroni"A package was whatever size the grocer sold, so this is genuinely ambiguous. Judge it against the sauce, which is small — one cup of milk thickened with two tablespoons cornstarch — and err low; something in the region of half a pound of dry macaroni is as much as it will coat.
- Meat extractLiebig's, Bovril or Armour's extract of beef: a dark, salty, spoonable paste. A half teaspoon of concentrated beef base or bouillon paste does the same job. Season with salt only after it goes in, as it carries a great deal on its own.
- The butter is unlisted in the methodThe butter -- The ingredient list gives 1 oz, and the only use the method makes of it is "a buttered casserole," which will not take an ounce. Melt the rest into the boiling milk before the cornstarch goes in, or dot it over the top.
- Cornstarch, not rouxSlaking the cornstarch in cold milk first is the whole trick; tipped dry into hot milk it seizes into lumps that will not whisk out. The ten minutes of cooking is to lose the raw starch taste, and the sauce wants stirring more often than "occasionally" or it will catch.
- The casseroleThe recipe specifies nothing beyond "a buttered casserole," and it goes into the oven uncovered here. Any 1½-quart baking dish works. Warm an earthenware one gradually rather than setting it into a hot oven cold.
- "Put in the oven to brown over"Everything is already cooked, so this is colour only. A hot oven for ten minutes or so, or a few minutes under the broiler, will do it; watch it rather than timing it. A little extra grated cheese on top helps it brown, as one ounce mixed into the sauce leaves nothing on the surface.
- Ounces and tablespoonsThe old equivalences hold: 1 oz butter is a heaping tablespoon, 1 oz grated hard cheese is about 4 tablespoons loosely packed.
- YieldServes four as a light supper dish, or three if it is the whole meal. A green salad and bread are the period accompaniment.
This is cold-meat cookery, the working heart of most household manuals of the period: a joint was roasted on Sunday and the remains had to reappear four or five times without looking like leftovers. Macaroni, cheese sauce and a browned top were the standard disguise. The half teaspoon of meat extract is the giveaway detail of the era: commercial beef extracts, sold from the 1860s onward and heavily advertised by the turn of the century, let a cook put beef flavour into a dish built on scraps. Tongue as an alternative to ham is likewise a period commonplace, when a boiled and pressed ox tongue was ordinary domestic fare rather than a delicacy.