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Cheese Course (III INGREDIENTS for dish)
III. - INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. lb. of pipe macaroni, 1/2 pint of brown gravy, 6 oz. of grated Parmesan cheese. AVERAGE COST, 9d. Wash the macaroni and boil it in salt water until quite tender; drain it and put it into a rather deep dish. Have ready a pint of good brown gravy, pour it hot over the macaroni and send it to table with grated Parmesan served on a separate dish.
When the flavour is liked, a little pounded mace may be added to the water in which the macaroni is boiled; but this must always be sparingly added, as it will impart a very strong flavour.
TIME.-1 to 1 hour to boil the macaroni.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian savoury course rather than a main dish: plain boiled macaroni under hot gravy, with grated Parmesan passed separately. The transcription has lost two numerals, so read the quantities with care.
- The missing quantitiesThe ingredient line reads "lb. of pipe macaroni" with the fraction dropped in printing; half a pound would be a plausible amount for four. The gravy is likewise inconsistent — ½ pint in the list, a pint in the method. A pint (20 fl oz British, about 2½ US cups) is the more plausible amount for a dish meant to be sauced rather than dressed.
- Boiling timeThe TIME line has also lost a numeral ("1 to 1 hour"), but whatever the missing figure, an hour or so of boiling reflects the coarse, slow-drying macaroni of the period. Modern dried macaroni is done in 8 to 12 minutes; boiled for an hour it disintegrates. Cook to just tender and drain.
- Pipe macaroniLarge hollow tubes, closer to today's rigatoni or ziti than to elbow macaroni. The wide bore is the point — it holds the gravy.
- Brown gravyNot pan drippings from a roast but the kitchen's standing brown sauce: browned flour and butter let down with beef stock, seasoned and strained. Any well-reduced, glossy beef gravy answers; it should coat, not flood.
- MaceThe blade covering of the nutmeg seed, pounded to a powder. The warning to add it sparingly is sound — a good pinch in the cooking water is enough for a pot of pasta.
- ParmesanSix ounces of grated Parmesan for four is generous by modern habit, but it is served at table as a condiment rather than stirred in, so guests take what they want. Grate it coarsely; pre-grated cheese sits badly in a bowl on the table.
- ServingEverything must go to table hot — dish warmed, gravy poured on at the last moment. Cold gravy on cooling macaroni sets into paste. As written this serves four as a course within a longer dinner, or two as a light supper.
This is one of a numbered run of macaroni preparations in Beeton's cheese chapter, and its placing there matters: in a Victorian dinner served à la russe, macaroni with cheese belonged to the savoury or cheese course near the end of the meal, not to the middle of it. Macaroni had been familiar in wealthy English kitchens since the eighteenth century, when young men returning from the Grand Tour with Italian tastes were nicknamed "Macaronis" ‖ the same joke preserved in "Yankee Doodle." By Beeton's day it was imported dried in long tubes and sold by weight, sturdy stuff that genuinely wanted long boiling. The average cost is given as ninepence, and much of the dish's appeal lies there: Parmesan was an expensive import, but six ounces handed round in a separate dish stretched a long way over a pennyworth of pasta.