Home › Vegetables › Macaroni, Stewed
Macaroni, Stewed
Boil the macaroni until soft, throw it into a colander, and drain well; then return it to the kettle, nearly cover with milk, and season with butter, salt and pepper to taste. Let all boil together for three minutes, and serve.
A plain milk-stewed macaroni from the vegetable chapter, written for cooks who already knew what "soft" meant. The whole dish depends on how the milk behaves in those last three minutes.
- The hinge: keep the milk below a rolling boilThree minutes at a true boil will catch and scorch on the bottom of the pan and can break the milk. Bring it just to a bare simmer, stir, and let the starch on the pasta thicken it slightly.
- "Boil until soft" means past al denteTurn-of-the-century macaroni was dried hard and often cooked 20 minutes or more. Modern dried elbows or cut ziti reach the intended softness in 8-10 minutes; the pasta then finishes in the milk, so pull it a minute early.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For four servings use about 8 oz dry macaroni, 2-3 tablespoons butter, and whole milk to nearly cover the drained pasta in the pot -- depending on the pan, that will be somewhere from about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 cups.
- "The kettle"Here it means the same pot the macaroni boiled in, not a tea kettle. Wipe out any starch scum before returning the pasta, or it will stick as the milk heats.
- Drain but do not rinseThe clinging starch is the only thickener in the dish. Rinsing under cold water leaves you with pasta sitting in thin milk.
- Milk choiceWhole milk is what was meant. Skim will stay watery in three minutes; if you want body closer to a sauce, use half milk and half cream, or add a spoonful of grated cheese off the heat.
- ServingIt is a side dish, served hot, and it does not hold: the pasta keeps absorbing milk and soon turns pasty.
Macaroni in American cookbooks of this period was commonly treated as a starchy accompaniment to meat, in the same rank as potatoes or hominy. Butterick, better known as a pattern company, published cook books aimed at a broad middle-class readership. Dried macaroni had been imported into the United States since the early nineteenth century and was being made domestically in quantity by the 1880s, which put it within reach of ordinary households; recipes like this one, with no cheese and no oven, treated it as a cheap filling starch rather than an Italian delicacy.