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Macaroni Salad
1 cup macaroni 1 cup sliced celery 2 tablespoons minced onion 2 tablespoons chopped green pepper 2 tablespoons chopped pimiento 3/4 cup mayonnaise Mix lightly boiled macaroni, cut in 1/2 inch lengths, with remaining ingredients. Serve on lettuce leaves; garnish with red and green pepper rings.
A plain cold macaroni salad of the sort that filled meatless menus between the wars. Two things need pinning down: how much macaroni is meant, and what "lightly boiled" was asking for.
- The macaroni measureOne cup is most likely dry macaroni, which yields roughly two to two and a half cups cooked. If you read it as cooked macaroni, the salad will be nearly all dressing.
- "Lightly boiled"Most likely just cooked and still firm rather than soft. Rinse under cold water to stop the cooking and wash off surface starch, or the mayonnaise will turn pasty.
- Cutting the macaroniThe instruction to cut in half-inch lengths suggests the long straight macaroni common at the time rather than short elbows. Modern elbow macaroni needs no cutting.
- PimientoJarred pimientos are still sold, usually diced, near the olives. Drain and pat them dry; a roasted red pepper, finely chopped, works as well.
- SeasoningThe recipe gives none. Salt the pasta water, and taste the finished salad for salt and something acid — a spoon of vinegar or lemon juice — before serving, or it will read as flat and heavy.
- The dressing quantityThree-quarters of a cup of mayonnaise is generous by current taste for this amount of pasta. Start with half, chill, and add more if it looks dry, since chilled pasta absorbs dressing as it stands.
- Chilling and holdingDress and chill at least an hour so the celery and onion lose their raw edge. A mayonnaise-bound salad should not sit at room temperature more than two hours; keep it refrigerated until it goes to the table.
- YieldFour modest servings as a light main course on lettuce, or six as a side.
Macaroni salad belongs to the era when commercially jarred mayonnaise became a pantry staple in American kitchens and cold bound salads multiplied accordingly — potato, cabbage, chicken, and macaroni all built on the same principle. Books of this period often supplied meatless dishes not for dietary preference but for Fridays, for Lent, and for the plain economy of stretching a household budget, and a starch-plus-mayonnaise salad met all three at once. The chopped green pepper and jarred pimiento are period signatures too, valued as much for the red-and-green flecking as for flavor. Dishes like this were expected to look composed on a lettuce leaf, a habit often traced to the elaborately molded and garnished salads of the late nineteenth century.