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Macaroni with Tomatoes
Break one-fourth pound of macaroni in lengths of about three inches, plunge them into a saucepan of boiling salted water, and boil for twenty minutes or so until done. Take them out, drain, and put them in a baking-dish; mix in one ounce of grated Parmesan cheese, one teacupful of stewed tomatoes, an equal quantity of brown meat gravy, a lump of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Place the dish in a slack oven, allow the mixture to simmer gently for thirty minutes, and serve. It need not be baked unless desired, and care must be exercised to see that the flavor of the tomatoes is not too strong, and also that it is not salted too much.
A short, forgiving side dish from Oscar's Waldorf kitchen, written when macaroni was still boiled to softness. The only real adjustments are the pasta timing and the oven temperature.
- Cut the boiling timeTwenty minutes will leave dried macaroni collapsing, and it then spends another half hour in the oven. Boil eight to ten minutes, just short of al dente, and let the baking dish finish it.
- A slack ovenThat is a cooling or low oven, roughly 300F. The dish is meant to hold at a bare simmer, not to brown.
- TeacupfulPeriod sources put a teacup anywhere from a gill (four fluid ounces) to about six; taken at six, that is three-quarters of a cup each of tomatoes and gravy. The two together should just moisten the macaroni, not swim it.
- Brown meat gravyPresumably the kitchen's stock-based brown sauce, an espagnole or reduced roast drippings. Pan juices from a roast, or a good reduced beef stock thickened lightly with a brown roux, do the same work.
- Stewed tomatoesThe recipe explicitly warns that the tomato flavour can easily be too strong. If using canned tomatoes, drain them and cook off some of the liquid first.
- Salt with restraintThe caution is real. Salted pasta water, Parmesan and a reduced meat gravy each bring salt, and the dish concentrates further in the oven. Season only at the end.
- YieldA quarter pound of dry macaroni serves two as a side, one as a main course.
Macaroni reached American tables long before tomato sauce did, and through most of the nineteenth century it was treated as a cheese dish in the English manner, boiled soft and layered with Parmesan and cream. This version sits at a point where the Italian habit of dressing pasta with tomato and the older gravy-and-cheese formula appear together in equal measure. The brown meat gravy suggests it comes from a professional kitchen: a hotel like the Waldorf would likely have had espagnole and roast drippings on hand, and a side dish like this may have been a way of putting them to use. Oscar Tschirky, the ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel whose name the 1896 book carries, was assembling a working reference for a large establishment rather than a cook's manual. The instructions end with two warnings about balance and none about technique.