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Baked Macaroni
Put nine ounces of macaroni without breaking it into a saucepan with boiling salted water and when done drain, put it into a stewpan, add a little pepper and grated nutmeg to taste and thicken with a few tablespoonfuls of bechamel sauce. Warm this up on the fire for a few minutes, take it off, toss the pan and add one-fourth pound of butter, two ounces each of grated Parmesan and also of grated Gruyere cheese and pour the whole into a baking-dish. Sprinkle with a little more cheese and gratinate for thirty minutes in the oven; then serve.
Macaroni, Bolognese Style Break some lasagna or macaroni into convenient lengths and boil in salted water. Thoroughly wash sufficient spinach, using plenty of water, as it is very gritty; put it into a saucepan of boiling water with a lump of salt and boil until tender. Drain the spinach well, pass it through a fine hair-sieve and put it into a stewpan; moisten with a little rich veal gravy and stir it over the fire for a few minutes. When the macaroni is cooked drain it, arrange on a deep dish in alternate layers with the spinach, placing a good supply of grated Parmesan cheese between each layer, cover the dish and place it in a moderately hot oven for about three-quarters of an hour. When ready serve the macaroni very hot in the dish in which it was cooked.
Two related dishes run together in one paragraph: a straightforward baked macaroni finished with three fats, and a layered spinach-and-Parmesan version. Both assume a well-stocked professional larder, chiefly béchamel and veal gravy.
- The hinge: drain dry, sauce lightlyThe béchamel is described as "a few tablespoonfuls" — it is a binder, not a sauce bath. Wet macaroni plus too much sauce gives a loose, milky bake instead of the browned, close-textured result the recipe is after.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives none. To gratinate is to brown the top, so a hot oven — in the region of 400F — suits the thirty minutes given; watch it rather than trusting the clock. "Moderately hot" in period usage corresponds roughly to 375-400F; covered, for three-quarters of an hour, that version is being heated through and melded rather than browned.
- Nine ounces, unbrokenNine ounces of dry macaroni is a little over half a standard 1 lb box and serves four as a side, two or three as a main. Long macaroni is called for and kept whole; if you use elbows the layering and the mouthfeel both change.
- A quarter pound of butterFour ounces of butter to nine ounces of pasta plus four ounces of cheese is a hotel-kitchen ratio. Two ounces still produces a rich dish; the butter is tossed in off the heat so it emulsifies rather than fries.
- Gruyère and ParmesanTwo ounces each, grated fine. Gruyère melts and stretches, Parmesan browns and salts. Pre-grated Parmesan is dusted with anti-caking starch and will not gratinate cleanly — grate from a wedge.
- Béchamel, if you have none standing byA professional kitchen of this kind would in all likelihood have had some already made. A small quantity from a tablespoon each of butter and flour cooked out and whisked with two-thirds of a cup of milk is enough for the whole dish.
- Hair sieve and veal gravyA fine hair-sieve is a fine-mesh sieve or a food mill; the point is a smooth spinach purée with no stems. Rich veal gravy can be replaced by a few spoonfuls of reduced veal or chicken stock — enough to loosen the purée, not to make it soupy.
- Spinach must be squeezedBoiled spinach holds a surprising amount of water. Press it hard in a sieve or twist it in a towel before puréeing, or the layers will weep into the pasta during the long covered bake.
- ServingThe second version is served in its baking dish, which was normal for a gratin course. Both want to go to table hot; they set firm and dull as they cool.
Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf kitchen worked in the French idiom, and it shows here: macaroni is bound with béchamel, buttered off the heat and gratinated, rather than treated as the Italian-American baked pasta then taking hold in New York. The second dish is called Bolognese style, but note what it does not contain — no tomato and no meat sauce, only spinach, cheese and veal gravy; the name appears to be used loosely here. The mention of lasagna as an alternative to macaroni shows the writer thinking of the shape as interchangeable. Parmesan and Gruyère both reached American hotel larders as imports.