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Baked Macaroni
Take about three ounces macaroni and boil till tender in a stewpan with a little water; take a pudding dish or pan, warm a little butter in it, and put in a layer of macaroni, then a layer of cheese grated or cut in small bits, and sprinkle over with salt, pepper and small pieces of butter, then add another layer of macaroni, and SO on, finishing off with cheese; pour on rich milk or cream enough to just come to the top of the ingredients, and bake from one-half to three quarters of an hour. Rice may be used instead of macaroni by first cooking as follows: Pick and wash a cup of rice, put in a stew-kettle with three cups boiling water, and set over the fire-the boiling water makes the kernels retain their shape better than when cold water is used. When done put a layer of rice, cheese, etc., alternately as you would macaroni, and bake in the same way.
A layered macaroni and cheese with no roux and no crumb topping — the milk and cheese make their own sauce in the dish. Two decisions the original leaves to you: the oven temperature and how much to cook the pasta first.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits the half to three-quarter hour stated. Hotter and the milk will break and boil over the sides before the interior sets.
- Undercook the macaroniThis is the hinge. "Boil till tender" then half an hour in the oven gives mush. Boil it two or three minutes short of tender, in a full pot of well-salted water rather than the "little water" specified, and drain it while it still has bite.
- Three ouncesAbout a cup of dry elbows or short-cut macaroni. It serves two as a main dish or three or four alongside meat; scale up freely, keeping the milk at just the level of the top layer.
- Rich milk or creamWhole milk works; adding some cream gets you closer to unskimmed, cream-topped milk, which is the likeliest sense of 'rich milk' here. Skim milk will go thin and watery, since there is no flour here to bind it.
- The cheeseUnspecified. A firm aged cheese is what the method wants, and a sharp cheddar is a good substitute. Grate about 4 to 6 ounces for three ounces of macaroni. Pre-shredded cheese is coated with starch and gives a grainier result.
- Dish and browningA shallow one-quart baking dish, buttered as directed. If the top has not browned by the end, run it under the broiler for two or three minutes rather than extending the bake, which only dries the interior.
- The rice versionThe original boils the rice in three cups of water and drains it when done rather than steaming it dry; three cups to one cup is more water than the usual absorption ratio, so treat it as a boil-and-drain. Cook it until just tender, drain well, and spread it loosely in layers so it does not compact into a solid block.
Baked macaroni and cheese in this layered form — pasta, grated cheese, butter, milk poured over, baked — appears in American cookbooks earlier than the flour-thickened sauce that dominates modern recipes; Mary Randolph's 1824 layered macaroni and cheese is an early printed example. Related dishes appear in eighteenth-century English cookery under names such as macaroni pie or macaroni and cheese, though the line of descent is not straightforward. Thomas Jefferson is often credited with helping introduce baked macaroni in the young United States after his years abroad, a claim frequently repeated and only partly documented. Macaroni and rice were commonly treated in period books as starchy dishes to accompany meat rather than as the centre of a meal. The rice variation at the end suits a book with a Southern market, where rice was widely available.