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Baked Macaroni or Spaghetti
1 cup macaroni. 1 1/2 cups cream sauce. 1 cup bread crumbs, buttered. 1 cup cheese added to sauce while hot.
Put macaroni in pan, then sauce. Cover with bread crumbs and bake brown. Sauce for this: 1 1/2 cups milk. 1/4 cup flour. 1/4 cup butter. 1 teaspoon salt. Dash red pepper.
A terse Wilson-era formula that assumes you already know the basics of a white sauce. Two things are left unsaid: the macaroni must be boiled first, and the sauce as written is stiff enough to need thinning.
- Cook the pasta firstThe recipe takes for granted that the macaroni is already boiled and drained. One cup dry yields roughly two to two and a half cups cooked; boil it a minute or two short of done, since it will keep softening in the oven.
- The sauce is a heavy oneThe sauce is a thick one -- A quarter cup each of butter and flour to a cup and a half of milk gives a distinctly thick bechamel, thicker still once the cheese goes in. Cook the roux two or three minutes without colouring, then add the milk gradually. If it will not coat the macaroni loosely, let it down with another half cup of milk.
- Cheese off the heat"Added to the sauce while hot" should mean hot but no longer boiling. Grated cheese stirred into a simmering sauce breaks and turns grainy; pull the pan off the burner first. A cup of grated cheese is about 3 to 4 oz.
- Which cheeseA firm American factory cheddar is the likeliest cheese for a book of this date, though the recipe does not specify. Any sharp cheddar works; avoid pre-shredded bagged cheese, which is dusted with starch and resists melting smoothly.
- Red pepper"Dash red pepper" is cayenne, not paprika and not crushed chilli flakes. An eighth of a teaspoon is plenty; it is there to lift the dairy, not to be tasted as heat.
- Buttered crumbsA cup of fresh soft crumbs tossed with about two tablespoons of melted butter. Dry packaged crumbs will absorb less and brown faster, so use rather less butter and watch the top.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. 375F suits it: 25 to 30 minutes until the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crumbs are an even brown. If assembled from cold ingredients, allow closer to 40 minutes.
- YieldServes three as a main dish or four to six as a side, in an 8-inch square dish or a 1 1/2-quart casserole.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal during and just after the First World War, when American households were being urged to stretch or skip meat entirely, which is the context in which a dish of macaroni and cheese would be offered as a main course, a thing to put on the table in place of a roast. Baked macaroni with cheese and a crumb top was by then long established in American cookery, appearing in printed collections since the early nineteenth century -- Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife of 1824 carries a version -- and it is sometimes linked to the taste for Italian pasta among Thomas Jefferson and his circle, though how much that circle actually shaped American habits is uncertain. Wilson's version is characteristic of her style throughout the book, which is telegraphic to the point of terseness, assuming a cook who already knows how to boil macaroni and make a white sauce and needs only the proportions.