No. 2965

Macaronnicelli a la Lucini

Boil a pound of macaronnicelli; drain and put it in a sautoir with half a pound of butter. Cut five peeled tomatoes crosswise in two; press them well and fry in butter over a brisk fire, keeping them very whole. Grate half a pound of Swiss and parmesan cheese, half of each. Chop up a medium onion, fry it in butter with four ounces of cooked lean ham and as much bacon, both cut in three-sixteenths inch squares; drain off the butter and replace it by espagnole sauce (No. 414) and meat gravy; let cook for fifteen minutes, then dress the macaronnicelli in a vegetable dish, alternating each layer with one of the grated cheese; cover the surface with the halved tomatoes and pour the sauce over the whole.

← No. 2964 Macaroni Mezzani Grandi a la Cavallotti Macaroni, Rice & Farinaceous No. 2966 Spaghetti Macaroni a la Laurence →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a kitchen with espagnole and meat glaze already standing on the stove; the rest is straightforward. The one thing to get right is the layering — cheese goes between the pasta layers, not stirred through, so it melts into strata rather than turning the dish into a single mass.

MacaronnicelliEvidently an intermediate size, apparently thinner than macaroni and thicker than vermicelli, though Ranhofer nowhere defines it. Bucatini or a narrow perciatelli is probably the closest modern equivalent; ziti or penne will do but change the character.
Cooking the pastaThe recipe gives no time, and period instructions to "boil" pasta often ran considerably longer than modern al dente. Cook to the package time, or a minute short, since the pasta sits under hot sauce before serving.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan, not a covered baking dish. Here it is simply the vessel for tossing the drained pasta with butter.
Half a pound of butterTwo full sticks for a pound of pasta. Four ounces gives a rich result by modern standards; the full amount is authentic but very heavy alongside the ham, bacon and half-pound of cheese.
Swiss cheeseIn Ranhofer's usage this means Gruyère or Emmental, not processed sandwich slices. Four ounces of each, grated, mixed together.
Espagnole and meat gravyNo. 414 is the book's brown sauce, of the classic type built on a brown roux and long-cooked stock; "meat gravy" is pan juices or reduced brown stock. A good reduced beef or veal demi-glace stands in. No quantity is given in the original -- aim for enough to coat, roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups.
The tomatoesHalving crosswise and pressing out the seeds and water is what lets them fry rather than stew. Use firm plum tomatoes, cut side down in hot butter, and move them as little as possible so they hold their shape.
YieldA pound of pasta with this much garnish serves six as a course, four as a main dish. Serve immediately; the layered cheese sets as it cools.

A Little History

This is number 2965 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the monumental record of his long service as chef at Delmonico's in New York, which ran with an interruption from 1862 to 1896. The farinaceous chapter runs through dozens of pasta preparations, many of them named for someone — Cavallotti, Laurence, Lucini — in the French restaurant habit of dedicating a dish to a patron, a colleague or a visiting celebrity; the names are rarely explained and in most cases the person behind them is now unrecoverable. What the recipe shows is how Italian pasta entered the American grand-restaurant repertoire: not as an Italian dish but as a French one, its sauce a classical espagnole rather than a tomato sugo, with the tomatoes reduced to a garnish laid on top. Ranhofer's specification of a precise pasta size, and of Parmesan cut with Gruyere, reflects a kitchen buying from importers at a time when American home cooks more often met macaroni baked with milk and cheese.