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Baked Macaroni with Cheese
Put a layer of boiled macaroni in buttered baking dish, sprinkle with grated cheese; repeat, pour over White Sauce, cover with buttered crumbs, and bake until crumbs are brown.
Farmer wrote this as a method rather than a formula, assuming the reader would already have turned to her White Sauce and boiled macaroni entries. The quantities below are the ones those entries imply.
- No quantities givenThe original names no amounts at all. As a workable modern starting point for a 2-quart dish, figure 8 oz dry macaroni, 8 oz grated cheese and about 2 cups of white sauce; the recipe's "repeat" calls for two layers of macaroni and cheese.
- White SauceFarmer's White Sauce is 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, with salt and pepper. Double it here, and cook the roux a minute before adding milk so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
- Boil the macaroni shortFarmer's macaroni directions call for roughly 20 minutes in salted water. Modern macaroni should come out a good two minutes shy of al dente, since it keeps cooking in the sauce.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in a book of this date most likely meant a firm factory American cheese. A sharp yellow cheddar is the closest thing; grate it yourself, as bagged shreds are coated to stop them clumping and can go grainy.
- Buttered crumbsThese are soft bread crumbs tossed with melted butter, about 1 cup crumbs to 2 tablespoons butter, not dry packaged crumbs. Panko will brown but sits on top rather than knitting into a crust.
- Oven and timeThe book gives no temperature. Bake at 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the crumbs are well browned and the sauce bubbles at the edge.
- Season the sauce firmlyThe sauce carries most of the seasoning here, though the cheese and the salted macaroni water contribute too. Salt to taste plus a scrape of nutmeg or a little dry mustard keeps it from tasting flat.
- YieldServes four as a main dish or six as a side. Let it stand five minutes before serving so the sauce sets enough to spoon out cleanly.
Macaroni reached American cookbooks as a luxury import long before it was a pantry staple, and by the time Fannie Farmer published The Boston Cooking-School Cook-Book in 1896 domestic manufacture had begun to bring the price down, though imported pasta remained common for years afterwards. The recipe sits among the cereal dishes, alongside rice, hominy and oatmeal, which is consistent with the Boston Cooking School's interest in classifying foods by their constituents. The layered construction with white sauce and a buttered crumb top is a common American gratin method of the period, applied to macaroni, oysters, fish and vegetables alike, and Farmer's telegraphic style here, no amounts and no times, assumes a reader working through the book as a system of cross-references rather than a collection of standalone recipes.