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Timballs Macaroni (With it gradually till it)
with it gradually, till it is stiff enough to make into oval balls, about the size of a large plum. Fry them in the best salad oil, and serve them up either warm or cold.
MACARONI. 608. If for a corner, take a quarter of a pound of macaroni, scald it till tender, but not to break or stick together. When scalded, cut it in pieces one-third of an inch in length, and a perfect pipe; then make a brown mince of every kind of meat, game, and poultry you happen to have cooked, with a little fat and lean of ham or bacon. Add a small piece of onion, finely chopped, pepper, salt, a little cayenne, or ketchup and Worcestershire sauce about a tea-spoonful of each, and a small quantity of gravy to moisten it. Butter the basin thickly, and stick the macaroni closely into it, so as to give the appearance of a honeycomb when turned out, and fill up with the mince-meat, laying the rest of the macaroni at the top. Boil an hour, if a large basin, having tied a pudding cloth tightly over it, and take it out of the water five minutes before turning it out of the basin. Serve with a tureen of gravy, putting a very little in the dish. Another. Boil it about an hour and a half till tender, strain the water from it, and put it back into the saucepan. Add a little pepper, salt, and a very little cayenne, a small bit of butter, and a little cream; put it on a dish with some cheese cut thin, leave it before the fire a few minutes; or, when you have made the macaroni quite ready and hot, stir some grated cheese into it, and send it to table.
Two treatments of macaroni: a moulded pudding lined with cut macaroni tubes over a mince of leftover roast meats, and a plain buttered-and-cheesed macaroni. The moulded version is the substantial one, and its success rests entirely on how the basin is lined.
- The hinge: line the basin cold and tightButter the basin heavily and set the cut tubes standing upright and touching, end-on to the surface, so the turned-out pudding shows a honeycomb. Any gap fills with mince and the pattern is lost, so pack them closer than looks necessary.
- "For a corner"A corner dish was one of the smaller dishes set at the corners of the table alongside the main joint. Read it as a side dish rather than a centrepiece; a quarter pound of dry macaroni and its mince makes a modest accompaniment rather than a main course.
- The macaroni itselfVictorian macaroni came as long straight tubes, not the short elbows sold today. Use rigatoni, ziti or cut lengths of bucatini so you have a genuine open pipe to stand in the basin; discard any that split, as the recipe implies with "a perfect pipe".
- "Scald it till tender"Boil until just yielding, about 8 to 10 minutes for dried pasta. Stop while it is still firm, since it will cook for another hour in the basin, and rinsing briefly helps stop the pieces gluing together while you cut them.
- The second method's timingAn hour and a half probably reflects the harder dried macaroni of the period; it would reduce modern pasta to paste. Cook it to the packet time, drain, then return to the pan with the butter, cream and seasoning.
- KetchupIn cookery of this period ketchup usually means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin dark savoury condiment, not tomato sauce. A dash of mushroom ketchup or a good soy-based brown sauce gives the intended depth.
- Boiling the puddingTie a floured cloth or a doubled sheet of foil tightly over the basin and stand it in a pan of simmering water reaching two-thirds up the sides, topping up as needed. An hour at a steady simmer for a large basin; the five-minute rest out of the water before unmoulding lets it settle so it turns out whole.
- Browning the cheese dish"Leave it before the fire a few minutes" means to melt and lightly colour the cheese by radiant heat. A few minutes under a hot grill does the same thing.