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Spaghetti and Tomato
Put the ends of a handful of spaghetti in boiling salted water, so it softens, bend and coil it around the kettle. Cover and cook twenty minutes or until tender, drain, return to the kettle adding one cup stewed tomatoes, or enough to moisten the spaghetti, 1/3 cup grated cheese, and 1 tbsp. butter. Let simmer till sauce is about absorbed, then serve.
— Mrs. B. T. Northridge
A plain church-supper macaroni dish from the era when spaghetti came in long unbroken sticks and was cooked far past al dente. It works, but a few habits have changed.
- The coiling trickLong spaghetti was sold in straight rods too tall for a saucepan, so the ends were set in the boiling water and the strands bent around the pot as they softened. Still the right method if you dislike snapping the pasta.
- Twenty minutes is too longThat timing assumes the soft, fully yielding texture expected in American cooking a century ago. Dried spaghetti today is done in 8 to 11 minutes; check the box and taste. Since the pasta then simmers again in the sauce, pull it a minute short.
- "Kettle"Here it means an ordinary deep cooking pot, not a tea kettle.
- Stewed tomatoesIn home cooking of this period the term generally meant home-canned or tinned tomatoes cooked down with a little salt, and sometimes sugar and butter. Canned crushed or diced tomatoes, simmered briefly to thicken, are the closest match; a cup will just moisten a half pound of pasta.
- The cheese'grated cheese' in American home cookbooks of this kind could mean a dry aged American or firm store cheddar as readily as Parmesan. Either is faithful; Parmesan gives a sharper, saltier result.
- Simmering the sauce inLetting the liquid be nearly absorbed is what binds the dish, but keep the heat low and stir, or the cheese will catch and string on the bottom of the pot.
- YieldA "handful" of spaghetti is roughly 4 to 6 ounces, enough for two modest servings. Scale the tomato and cheese proportionally if you cook a full pound.
Spaghetti entered American home cookbooks in the late nineteenth century as a variant of macaroni, and for decades the two names were often used more or less interchangeably. Recipes like this one — boiled soft, moistened with stewed tomatoes, bound with grated cheese and butter — represent the thoroughly domesticated version that circulated during the decades of large-scale Italian immigration, roughly 1880 to 1920. A meatless dish of this kind served as a main course, cheap and filling, exactly the sort of contribution expected in a church society cookbook compiled from members' own kitchens and printed with each cook's name attached.