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Macaroni, A Sweet Dish of
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. lb. of macaroni, 1½ pint of milk, the rind of lemon, 3 oz. of lump sugar, pint of custard. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Put the milk into a saucepan, with the lemon-peel and sugar; bring it to the boiling point, drop in the macaroni and let it gradually swell over a gentle fire, but do not allow the pipes to break. The form should be entirely preserved and, though tender, should be firm and not soft, with no part beginning to melt. Should the milk dry away before the macaroni is sufficiently swelled, add a little more. Make a custard place the macaroni on a dish and pour the custard over the hot macaroni; grate over a little nutmeg and, when cold, garnish the dish with slices of candied citron.
TIME. From 40 to 50 minutes to swell the macaroni.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian milk pudding built on macaroni rather than rice, finished with pouring custard and served cold. The whole thing turns on cooking the pasta slowly in sweetened milk so it swells without collapsing.
- QuantitiesThe macaroni, lemon and custard amounts have lost their fractions in this text and cannot be recovered from the page itself. Against the 1½ pints (about 720 ml) of milk, printed editions generally give ½ lb of macaroni, the rind of half a lemon in pared strips, and ½ pint (about 300 ml) of custard; the lemon peel is removed before serving.
- The macaroniVictorian macaroni was long, straight, hollow tubes, sold in lengths and broken up as needed. Modern short-cut elbow macaroni works but looks nothing like the intended dish; long ziti or bucatini snapped into 2-inch lengths is closer to the original.
- Cooking timeForty to fifty minutes reflects the gentle swelling method the recipe prescribes as well as the coarser dried pasta of the period. Modern durum macaroni softens faster, so start checking well before the stated time and judge by texture, not the clock.
- Milk over waterCooking pasta in milk means starch thickens the liquid quickly and it will catch on the base. Use a heavy pan, the lowest heat that keeps a bare tremble on the surface, and stir gently so the tubes are not broken.
- Lump sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sugar broken from a cone; 3 oz (85 g) of ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent.
- The custardA pouring custard of egg yolks, milk and sugar, cooked to the point where it coats a spoon and never allowed to boil. Ready-made pouring custard substitutes without harming the dish.
- Candied citronCitron is a thick-rinded citrus candied in its peel, sold in slabs or slices; it is still available from baking suppliers around Christmas. Candied orange or lemon peel is the usual stand-in.
- ServingThe custard goes over the macaroni while it is still hot, then the whole dish is left to cool and set slightly before the citron is added. Serves four to five as written.
Sweet macaroni puddings were common in English cookery from the late eighteenth century onward, sitting alongside rice, sago and vermicelli puddings as a way of turning cheap dried starch and milk into a filling nursery dessert. Macaroni had appeared in English cookery texts well before the eighteenth century, and was for a long time treated as neutral material for both savoury and sweet treatment, so a cook of Mrs Beeton's era saw nothing odd in lemon, nutmeg and candied citron with it. The listed average cost of one shilling places it as an everyday middle-class pudding rather than a company dish, and the insistence that the tubes keep their shape and stay firm is a reminder that the Victorian household ideal of pasta was not the mush that overlong boiling in milk can easily produce.