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Macaroni Au Gratin
1 1/2 cups macaroni broken into one-inch lengths 1 cup grated Neufchatel cheese 2 cups milk 1 cup bread crumbs 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt Cook macaroni in boiling salted water until tender; drain, and pour over it a dash of water. Make a white sauce of the last four ingredients and mix with the macaroni. Stir the grated cheese into the mixture. Turn into a baking dish, cover with the bread crumbs, and bake in a moderate oven until nicely browned. If desired, buttered crumbs may be used.
A plain baked macaroni and cheese built on a medium white sauce. Two things in the original need translating: the oven description and the cheese.
- Moderate ovenSet it to 350F. "Until nicely browned" is roughly 25 to 30 minutes, since everything in the dish is already cooked and you are only setting the sauce and colouring the crumbs.
- The cheeseNeufchatel here appears to have been a fresh cheese sold in small cakes, firm enough to grate cold. American Neufchatel today is a soft, lower-fat cream cheese that will not grate; either soften it and beat it into the hot sauce, or substitute a cup of grated mild cheese with some body, such as a young Cheddar or Monterey Jack.
- Stir the cheese off the heatAdd it to the sauce once the pan is off the burner and let residual heat melt it. Boiling a fresh, high-moisture cheese in a flour sauce will make it grainy and weep fat.
- White sauce proportionsThree tablespoons each of butter and flour to two cups of milk sits on the light side of a medium sauce -- pourable, lightly coating. Cook the roux a minute or two before adding milk so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Undercook the macaroni"Until tender" likely meant softer than we would cook it now. Drain a couple of minutes short of tender, since it will absorb sauce and keep cooking in the oven.
- The dash of waterProbably a quick rinse to stop the drained macaroni from gluing itself together while you make the sauce. Drain it well again, or the sauce will thin.
- Buttered crumbsToss the cup of crumbs with two or three tablespoons of melted butter. Dry crumbs alone tend to scorch at the edges and stay pale in the middle.
- YieldFour servings as a main course, six as a side. A two-quart baking dish is about right.
Macaroni was a mainstay of American meatless cookery: cheap, shelf-stable, filling, and, paired with milk and cheese, nourishing. Au gratin means finished with a browned crust, from the French gratter, to scrape; the crumb topping here does the work that grated hard cheese does in French practice.