Course
1/2 lb. of pipe macaroni, I. -INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -lb. of pipe тacaroni, 2 oz. of butter, 6 oz. of Parmesan or Cheshire cheese, pepper and salt to taste, water, bread-crumbs.
AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Put about 3 pints of water into a saucepan with sufficient salt to flavour it; place it on the fire and, when it boils quickly, drop in the macaroni, broken up. Keep the water boiling until it is quite tender; drain the macaroni and put it into a shallow dish. Have ready the grated cheese, either Parmesan or Cheshire; sprinkle it amongst the macaroni and some of the butter cut into small pieces, reserving some of the cheese for the top layer. Season with a little pepper, or cayenne and cover the top layer of cheese with some very fine bread-crumbs. Warm, without oiling, the remainder of the butter and pour it gently over the bread-crumbs. Place the dish before a bright fire, to brown the crumbs; turn it once or twice, that it may be equally coloured and serve very hot.
The top of the macaroni may be browned with a salamander, which is even better MACARONI. than placing it before the fire, as the process is more expeditious; but it should never be browned in the oven, as the butter would oil and so impart a very disagreeable flavour to the dish. In boiling the macaroni, let it be perfectly tender, but firm, no part beginning to melt and the form entirely preserved. It may be boiled in plain water, with a little salt, instead of using milk, but should then have a small piece of butter mixed with it.
TIME.-1 to 1½ hour to boil the macaroni, 5 minutes to brown it before the fire.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. Riband macaroni may be dressed in the same manner, but does not require boiling so long a time.
Macaroni (as usually served with the
A Victorian macaroni cheese, grilled rather than baked. The method is sound, but two things need adjusting: the quantity of pasta and the cooking time.
- The missing quantityThe macaroni weight has lost its fraction and reads only "-lb." For six people with 6 oz of cheese, half a pound (about 225 g) of dried macaroni is the most plausible reading.
- Pipe macaroniThis is the thick, hollow tube macaroni of the period, considerably wider than modern elbow macaroni. Rigatoni or large penne come closest; ordinary macaroni will work but gives a denser dish. "Riband macaroni" in the note is a flat ribbon pasta, closer to tagliatelle.
- Boiling timeThe recipe's 1 to 1½ hours reflects the dried pasta then available. Modern dried pasta needs 8-12 minutes, and the instruction that matters is the one given at the end: tender but firm, with the form entirely preserved. Cook it a minute short, since it will finish under the grill.
- Brown it under the grill, not in the ovenThe warning about the oven is the hinge of the recipe. A salamander is a heated iron plate held over the surface; a domestic grill at full heat, the dish set close beneath it for two or three minutes, does the same job. Baking melts the butter through the crumbs and makes the whole thing greasy.
- Warm, without oilingMelting butter "without oiling" means bringing it just to liquid without letting it separate or brown. Take it off the heat as soon as it goes clear and pour it while barely warm.
- Cheshire cheeseA firm, crumbly, salty English cow's milk cheese. A mature Cheddar or Lancashire substitutes well; Parmesan gives the sharper, drier finish and needs less of it.
- The milk asideThe line about boiling in plain water "instead of using milk" refers to the alternative of simmering macaroni in milk, found elsewhere in cookery of the period. As written here the pasta is boiled in salted water throughout.
- Yield and costSix as a supper dish or side. The shilling given as average cost is a mid-Victorian figure and has no useful modern equivalent.
Macaroni was known on English tables well before Mrs Beeton, and by the 1860s it was treated as a savoury or a supper dish rather than an Italian one. A salamander was a flat iron disc on a long handle, heated in the fire and held over the surface of a dish to brown it, doing the work of a grill. The insistence that macaroni be tender but firm, with each tube keeping its shape, anticipates what would later be called al dente.