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Macaroni Cakes or Rissoles
3 ounces pipe macaroni 2 ounces grated cheese 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 1/2 pint milk Pepper and salt to taste Break the macaroni into very small pieces, and throw it into the boiling milk, and let it boil for three-quarters of an hour or until it is tender; add the grated cheese, chopped parsley and pepper, and allow it to simmer ten minutes longer. Add flour to bind, mix well, and turn into a flat or shallow dish. When cold form into cakes, any shape desired, and sprinkle over the bread crumbs, frying in boiling oil.
A stiff macaroni-and-cheese paste, chilled, cut and fried — essentially a croquette without the egg-and-crumb drill spelled out. Two things in the original need translating: the quantity of milk and the length of the boiling.
- The measurements in cupsThree ounces of short pipe macaroni is roughly 3/4 cup dry; 2 ounces of grated hard cheese is about 1/2 cup packed. Half a pint of milk is 1 cup if the book is using US measure, 10 fluid ounces if imperial — start with 1 cup and add more as the macaroni drinks it up.
- Forty-five minutes is for older pastaForty-five minutes suits the pasta of the period -- dried macaroni was often made with thicker walls and generally took longer to soften than modern pasta, which broken small will be tender well before the stated time. What the long cooking really achieves is a thick starchy binder, so keep the pan on low, stir often, and cook until the mixture is a stiff paste rather than watching the clock.
- Milk scorchesBoiling pasta directly in milk with no water means the sugars and proteins catch on the pan bottom. Use a heavy saucepan, the lowest heat that keeps it barely bubbling, and a wooden spoon across the base every minute or two.
- "Add flour to bind" — how muchThe original gives no quantity. Two to three tablespoons, sprinkled over and stirred in off the heat, is usually enough. Cook it another minute or two after adding so the flour loses its raw taste; the mixture should hold a furrow when you drag the spoon through it.
- The hinge: chill it hardSpread the mixture no more than 3/4 inch deep and refrigerate until cold and firm, at least two hours. Warm or soft mixture will slump in the pan and burst its crust. This is the single step that decides whether you get cakes or a mess.
- Crumbs need something to stick toSprinkled crumbs alone will fall off in the oil. Roll each cake in flour, then beaten egg, then fine dry breadcrumbs, and chill again for 20 minutes before frying.
- "Boiling oil"Means hot deep fat, not literally boiling — 350 to 375F. Fry in batches so the temperature holds, two to three minutes a side until deep gold, and drain on a rack rather than paper so the crust stays crisp.
- YieldAbout six to eight small cakes; a light lunch for two, or a first course for four with a sharp tomato sauce.
Rissole is a French borrowing, coming through Old French roissole from a Latin word meaning reddish-brown; by the nineteenth century it meant almost any bound mixture shaped, crumbed and fried, most often a way of using up cooked meat. Recasting the rissole with macaroni and cheese in place of the meat is exactly the sort of substitution that fills books like this one. Meatless cookery of the early twentieth century was often not vegetarian on principle; much of it was written for households urged to conserve meat and fat for other uses, and such books leaned heavily on cheese, pulses and pasta. The croquette was a convenient vehicle, since the crisp crumb coating and the deep fat gave a meatless mixture the browned, savoury character diners expected from a made dish. Pipe macaroni — plain hollow tubes, often sold long and broken down by the cook — was a common form in English-language shops before short-cut pasta became usual.