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Baked Macaroni Pudding
3/4 pound of macaroni. 3 pints of milk to stew in. 1/2 pound of sugar. 1/4 pound of butter. 1 pint of cream to mix up with 10 yolks, or 5 whole eggs. Salt; vanilla.
Boil the milk with the sugar and butter in it. and a pinch of salt. Put in the macaroni broken in inch lengths. Simmer with the lid on about half an hour. Beat the yolks and cream together, add flavoring mix with the macaroni by shaking, without a spoon. Bake in a buttered pan about half an hour, or till set. Stew raisins in wine sauce to serve with it.
A large, rich baked macaroni custard from the era when macaroni was as likely to appear in a dessert as in a savory dish. The whole thing hinges on treating it as a custard: gentle heat, and stop when it just sets.
- Weights in cups3/4 lb macaroni is about 3 cups dry short-cut pasta; 1/2 lb sugar is a generous cup; 1/4 lb butter is one stick. Three pints of milk is 6 cups, one pint of cream is 2 cups.
- YieldThe original gives none. It makes a large pudding, on the order of a 9x13-inch pan or a deep 3-quart dish, enough for roughly ten to twelve servings.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "bake"; treat it as a moderate oven, 325-350F. Above that the eggs curdle at the edges before the center sets, and a large flat dish of custard is unforgiving. A water bath is worth the trouble here.
- The macaroniDried macaroni of the period was generally harder and slower to soften than modern pasta, which likely accounts for the half-hour simmer. Modern dried pasta will be soft in 10-12 minutes and will turn to paste in thirty. Simmer only until barely tender, then let it finish absorbing milk off the heat.
- Milk with sugar and butterSweetened milk scorches readily. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat low once the macaroni is in, and stir the bottom occasionally despite the lid.
- Shaking, not stirringThis is the instruction that matters. The egg-and-cream mixture is folded in by shaking the pan so the softened macaroni stays in whole pieces rather than breaking into a starchy mush. Cool the macaroni to warm, not hot, before adding the eggs, or they will scramble.
- Yolks versus whole eggsTen yolks give a denser, smoother, distinctly yellow custard; five whole eggs set firmer and slice more cleanly. Both are correct in the period; choose by whether you want a spoon pudding or a cut square.
- DonenessSet means a knife inserted an inch from the center comes out clean and the middle still trembles slightly. It continues cooking as it stands. Half an hour is optimistic for a deep dish; check from 35 minutes.
- Wine sauce with raisinsNo proportions are given. A workable reading of the period standard is raisins plumped in sweet wine such as sherry or Madeira, thickened lightly with butter and sugar, served warm and spooned over.
Sweet macaroni puddings were commonplace in English and American cookery through the nineteenth century, when macaroni was classed with rice, sago and vermicelli as a starch for milk puddings as readily as it was used in savory dishes. The logic is the same as rice pudding: a hard starch stewed slowly in sweetened milk, then bound with an egg custard and baked. The scale of this one -- three pints of milk, a pint of cream, ten yolks -- and the terse, weight-based listing suggest a recipe written for a professional kitchen, where a pan could be cut into portions and dressed with a wine-and-raisin sauce. The instruction to shake rather than stir aims at keeping the macaroni in whole pieces rather than a muddled starchy mass.