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Spaghetti Ring
1 package spaghetti, broken in pieces 2 tablespoons shortening 1 small onion, minced 1 tablespoon green pepper, chopped 1 cup canned mushrooms 3 egg yolks, beaten 1/2 cup milk 1 cup tomato puree salt 1 teaspoon thyme or kitchen bouquet 1 cup grated cheese Drop spaghetti into boiling salted water and cook until tender, then drain. Put shortening in pan; when hot add onion, pepper and mushrooms and simmer. Beat egg yolks and mix well with milk. Add to onions pepper and mushrooms, then add tomato puree, salt, thyme, cheese and spaghetti. Mix thoroughly. Fold in beaten egg whites, pour into a ring form, set in hot water and bake 45 minutes at 300 degrees F. Turn out on dish and fill center with creamed shrimp. Recipe makes twelve servings.
A baked spaghetti custard turned out of a ring mold, from the era when the ring form and its creamed filling were the mark of an ambitious hostess. The method is a water-bath custard, so the low oven and the bain-marie are not optional.
- The hinge: it is a custardEverything after the spaghetti goes into an egg-and-milk custard, which is why it bakes at 300F in a pan of hot water. Higher heat or a dry pan will curdle the eggs and the ring will weep and refuse to unmold.
- "1 package spaghetti"The recipe gives no weight. Period packages ran anywhere from 8 oz to a pound; the quantity of custard here suggests the smaller end, and a full modern pound box is likely to give a dry, crumbly ring.
- Egg whitesThe whites of the three eggs are beaten separately and folded in at the end, though only the yolks appear in the list of ingredients. Beat them to soft, not stiff, peaks so they fold into a heavy mixture without deflating.
- Thyme or kitchen bouquetThese are not interchangeable flavors. Kitchen Bouquet is a caramel-and-vegetable browning sauce used for color and savory depth; a teaspoon of it will darken the mixture noticeably. If you want the herb, use about 1 teaspoon dried thyme.
- ShorteningHere it simply means fat for sauteing. Butter or oil is the sensible modern choice; hydrogenated vegetable shortening contributes nothing to the flavor.
- Canned mushroomsA cup, drained. Fresh sliced mushrooms work, but cook them until their liquid has evaporated or the extra water will loosen the custard.
- "Simmer" the vegetablesRead this as sweating them in the fat until soft, 5 to 8 minutes, then cooling slightly before the egg mixture goes in so the yolks do not scramble.
- Mold and unmoldingA 1 1/2 to 2 quart ring mold, well greased. Let the baked ring rest 10 minutes out of the water bath before inverting; run a thin knife around both edges first.
- Yield and the fillingTwelve servings is optimistic for a ring built on a single package of spaghetti; eight is more realistic as a main course. The creamed shrimp for the center is assumed rather than given, so a separate white-sauce recipe with cooked shrimp will be needed.
Ring molds were common in American cooking between the wars, and this is a familiar formula: a starch bound with eggs, baked gently in a water bath, turned out, and its hollow center filled with something creamed and expensive-looking. The appeal was architectural. A cook could build a company dish out of a package of spaghetti, a can of mushrooms and a little tomato puree, then justify the shrimp as a garnish rather than the meal. The grated cheese and tomato puree standing in for a sauce suggest Italian-American pantry cooking absorbed into the general repertoire of the American kitchen, where spaghetti had become simply another starch to be handled like rice or noodles.