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Macaroni and Mushrooms with Bacon
3 tablespoons shortening 1 cup mushrooms 1 teaspoon lemon juice 2 tablespoons flour 1 1/4 cups milk 1/4 pound macaroni (cooked) Melt shortening and add diced mushrooms and lemon juice, cook for 3 minutes and add flour, then brown; add milk and stir until mixture boils. Add salt and pepper to taste; add macaroni and reheat. Turn into a serving dish and garnish with crisp bacon and cheese. Serves 6.
A quick mushroom cream sauce built on a small roux, folded through cooked macaroni. The recipe assumes you know how to keep a flour-thickened sauce smooth, and it leaves the garnish quantities entirely to you.
- ShorteningIn a book of this vintage the word may mean solid vegetable shortening, lard or butter, as it was often used generically for any cooking fat. Butter gives a better flavour here and behaves the same in a roux; 3 tablespoons is more fat than the usual equal-parts roux would take against 2 tablespoons of flour, leaving the sauce slightly rich.
- "Brown" the flour, but only justThirty to sixty seconds of stirring over medium heat gives a faint nutty colour; browned further, the flour loses some of its thickening power and the sauce will set up thinner.
- A cup of mushroomsMeasured diced, that is roughly 3 oz of button or cremini mushrooms. They release water as they cook, so give them longer than the stated 3 minutes if the pan looks wet -- flour added to a watery pan will not brown.
- Lemon juiceAdded to keep the mushrooms pale, a period habit from the days when white sauces were meant to stay white. It is optional now; leave it out if you want deeper mushroom flavour.
- Quarter pound of macaroniThat is 4 oz dry, about 1 1/4 cups of elbows, yielding roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups cooked. Cook it a minute short of the package time since it gets reheated in the sauce.
- Sauce consistency1 1/4 cups milk to 2 tablespoons flour gives a sauce a little thinner than a standard medium white sauce, which suits a dish where the macaroni absorbs liquid as it reheats. If it tightens too much on standing, loosen with a splash of hot milk.
- The garnishNo amounts are given for the bacon or cheese. Four or five rashers cooked crisp and crumbled, and 2 to 3 oz of grated sharp cheddar, suit this quantity.
- YieldSix servings only as a side dish or a light supper course. As a main dish it feeds three, or four with bread and a salad.