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Scalloped Ham and Macaroni
Break ½ pound of macaroni in two-inch lengths.
Drop into a kettle of boiling salted water and keep at a galloping boil for about forty minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally with a fork.
Drain, rinse thoroughly with cold water, and drain again. Make a sauce with 1 tablespoonful of butter, I of flour and ½ pint of milk. When smoothly thickened, stir in 1 cupful of finely chopped cold boiled ham, ½ of a teaspoonful of salt, ½ of a teaspoonful of made mustard, a dash of cayenne and I beaten egg. Fill a shallow baking dish with alternate layers of the macaroni, sauce and more chopped ham (a second cupful), sprinkle with buttered crumbs and bake in a quick oven until golden brown.
Ham Croquettes, No. I Chop up finely 4 ounces of cooked ham, mix it with 2 chopped hard-boiled eggs, 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a pinch of powdered herbs, seasoning of salt and pepper, an equal quantity of potatoes, cooked and mashed, and I beaten egg. Roll the mixture into balls rather larger than a walnut, brush over with beaten egg, roll in fine bread crumbs, drop into smoking hot fat a few at a time and fry a light brown color. Drain on white paper and serve hot.
Ham Croquettes, No. 2 Brown 1 tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan ; when well colored add 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and brown again. Then add 1 cupful of beef stock and stir until thick and smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper, add IO drops of onion juice and 1 teaspoonful of mushroom catsup, 1 cupful of boiled rice and 1 cupful of finely chopped ham. Mix and set away until cold.
Then shape into croquettes, dip into slightly beaten egg, roll in dried bread crumbs and fry in smoking hot fat. Serve with tomato or any good brown sauce.
Ham Canapés Cut stale bakers' bread in thin slices and from these stamp out crescents and circles. Melt a little butter in a frying-pan, and when hot quickly fry the bread on both sides to a pale brown.
Chop fine some cold-boiled lean ham, season with paprika and a very little French mustard.
Moisten with a little sweet cream, and spread on the canapés. Sprinkle thickly with grated Swiss cheese, and place in a moderate oven until the cheese melts and begins to brown. Sprinkle with a little finely chopped parsley and hardboiled egg white.
A plain white-sauce bake that stretches a cupful or two of leftover ham across four servings. The one thing to change is the pasta.
- Cook the macaroni far lessForty minutes at a rolling boil reflects period practice, when macaroni was generally thicker than modern elbows and was cooked very soft. Modern extruded elbows need 6-8 minutes, and can be pulled a minute short of tender since they finish cooking in the sauce.
- "A galloping boil"Simply a hard, rolling boil in an uncovered pot with plenty of water. The rinse in cold water afterwards stops the cooking and keeps the pieces separate; drain well or the sauce will thin.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F on the usual conversions. The dish is already cooked through, so this is only to set the egg and brown the crumbs -- about 20 minutes.
- Half a pint of milkThe quantity is printed as "12 pint" but reads as ½ pint, which is 1 cup. With 1 tablespoon each of butter and flour that gives a thin pouring sauce, which is what you want between layers of pasta; a thicker sauce will not distribute.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard from the jar, not mustard powder. A mild yellow or Dijon works; if you only have powder, use about a third as much slaked in a little water.
- The beaten eggStir it in off the heat, once the sauce has stopped bubbling, or it will scramble in threads. It is what binds the finished scallop so it cuts rather than slumps.
- Buttered crumbsDry breadcrumbs tossed with melted butter until each crumb is coated -- roughly 2 tablespoons butter to ½ cup crumbs. Unbuttered crumbs scorch dry rather than browning.
- Salt and yieldTwo cupfuls of ham plus salted pasta water make this a salty dish; taste the sauce before adding the half teaspoon of salt. Serves four as a main course.
Scalloped dishes -- anything layered with sauce and crumbs and browned in a shallow dish -- were a standard way of turning a small quantity of cooked meat into a meal, and cookbooks of this stripe are built around that arithmetic. Macaroni had been an inexpensive pantry staple since the mid-nineteenth century, sold in long straight tubes that the cook broke by hand, which is why the instruction here is to break it into two-inch lengths rather than to measure it. The book's placement of the recipe under Meats rather than with pasta is telling: the ham is the point, the macaroni is the extender. Recipes like this, along with the croquettes and canapé form a small chain for working through a boiled ham from centre slices down to the last chopped scraps.