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Macaroni Timbales
Put one-half pound of macaroni into a saucepan of salted water, and boil until tender, drain, and cut it into pieces about two inches in length. Reduce one wineglassful of bechamel sauce in a saucepan over the fire, stirring in gradually a few tablespoonfuls of gravy; when well flavored, remove it from the fire, and pour it on the macaroni, together with a little powdered cinnamon and five ounces of butter. Meanwhile butter a timbale mould, sprinkle with the breadcrumbs, and line with sweetened tartlet-paste. Pour in the preparation, cover it with a flat of the paste, and place it in a moderate oven to bake. In about forty-five minutes remove it from the oven, place it on a dish, sprinkle over sugar flavored with cinnamon, and serve.
A sweet-crusted pasta pie in the old Neapolitan manner, written for a professional brigade with stock and sauce already at hand. A few of Oscar's measures need translating before it will work in a home kitchen.
- The hinge: undercook the macaroniIt goes into a 45-minute bake already sauced, so boil it several minutes short of tender rather than "until tender." Fully cooked macaroni collapses into paste inside the crust.
- A wineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. Reduce that small amount of béchamel with the gravy until it is thick enough to coat rather than pool.
- "Gravy"Not thickened pan gravy in the modern sense but concentrated meat juices or jus — a well-reduced brown veal or beef stock is the closest equivalent. A few tablespoons is all that is wanted.
- Five ounces of butterThat is ten tablespoons for half a pound of macaroni, restaurant-rich and enough to leak through the pastry. Two to three ounces gives the same gloss without flooding the shell.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. At that heat 45 minutes will set the filling and colour the sweet paste; check at 35 minutes, since sugared pastry browns faster than plain.
- Timbale mould and pasteA timbale mould is a straight-sided, slightly tapered metal form; a charlotte mould, deep cake tin or springform of about six inches stands in. The "sweetened tartlet-paste" is essentially a pate sucree, lining base and sides, with the flat of paste laid on as a lid.
- BreadcrumbsThe recipe sprinkles crumbs on the buttered mould before lining it — they help the pastry release and absorb butter that seeps out. Use dry fine crumbs, not fresh.
- Yield and servingA half pound of macaroni in a mould of about six inches should give roughly six wedges. Turn it out hot, dust with cinnamon sugar, and serve at once.
The dish belongs to the Italian timballo tradition — pasta baked inside a pastry drum — and specifically to the Neapolitan versions in which the crust is sweet and the finished pie is dusted with cinnamon and sugar. The combination reads oddly now, but sugar and cinnamon on pasta was common in Renaissance and early modern Europe, where pasta was served sweet as well as savoury; the meat gravy and béchamel here belong to the savoury side of a pairing that separated only gradually. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, drew his 1896 book from the hotel's working repertoire and from the French professional canon it depended on, which is why a formula like this arrives in shorthand — a wineglass of béchamel, a few spoons of gravy — assuming a kitchen where both were simmering already.