No. 339

Italian or Genoa Pastes; Lasagne, Lasagnette, Tagliarelli, Maccaroni, Vermicelli, Spaghetti, Paillettes, Maccaroncelli, Florence Snow

Pate d'Italie ou de Genes; Lasagne, Lasagnette, Tagliarelli, Maccaroni, Vermicelli, Spaghetti, Paillettes, Maccaroncelli et Neige de Florence

All these various pastes are to be previously blanched by throwing them into boiling water for five or ten minutes according to their respective thickness. When blanched, drain them, and finish cooking in broth or consomme, the proportion being half a pound of paste to three or four quarts of liquid. Put the paste into a soup tureen and pour the soup over, serving at the same time on a separate plate, some grated parmesan cheese.

Lasagne, Lasagnette and Tagliarelli.—Blanch of these one half pound for five minutes, cook them in a quart of broth, and serve in a tureen with consomme.

Maccaroni, Spaghetti, Vermicelli, Paillettes, Maccaroncelli.—For the large macaroni, blanch half a pound for twelve minutes or less in proportion to their thickness, when done, drain, and cook them in a quart of broth. Serve in a soup tureen with consomme.

Italian or Genoa Pastes and Vermicelli.—Blanch half a pound of these for five minutes, drain and cook them in a quart of broth, serve in a soup tureen with consomme.

Florence Snow.—Florence snow is made of fine gluten paste, extremely white and distributed into very fine shavings. This paste does not require any cooking; range it on plates and pass it round to the guests, after serving the soup, when each one takes some if so desired. This paste dissolves as soon as it comes in contact with a hot liquid.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is not making a pasta dish here; he is making soup garnishes for clear broth, and the whole method exists to keep the consomme from clouding. Read the two-stage cooking as the point of the recipe rather than an inconvenience.

Why blanch firstDried pasta sheds a great deal of surface starch in its first minutes. Blanching in plain water and draining sends that starch down the sink instead of into the consomme, which would otherwise turn cloudy and slightly slick. Finish the pasta in the broth only long enough to bring it to tenderness and let it take on flavour.
Modern pasta cooks fasterTwelve minutes of blanching plus a further spell in broth will reduce most supermarket dried pasta to mush. Blanch two or three minutes for fine vermicelli and thin ribbons, four or five for macaroni and spaghetti, then finish in the broth, tasting as you go. Ranhofer's longer times may reflect pasta that behaved differently from today's product.
Proportions and yieldHalf a pound of paste to three or four quarts of consomme is the working ratio for a dinner service, giving roughly twelve to sixteen soup plates. The half pound to one quart mentioned in the sub-paragraphs is the finishing pan, not the serving quantity.
The namesLasagnette and tagliarelli are narrow flat ribbons, closer to modern fettuccine and tagliolini than to lasagne sheets. Paillettes ("spangles") and maccaroncelli are small cut and thin tubular shapes; any small soup pasta stands in. The list is a run of shapes treated under one method rather than nine separate recipes.
Neige de FlorenceFlorence snow was a manufactured article: a starch or gluten paste shaved into weightless white flakes, meant to be scattered over clear soup at the table, where it dissolved on contact. It is now hard to find outside specialist French suppliers. Very fine crushed vermicelli nests are the nearest thing in effect, though they must be cooked.
Broth quality decides the dishWith nothing to hide behind, the consomme carries the whole plate. Use a properly clarified stock, seasoned to taste before the pasta goes in, and skim any fat from the surface after the pasta has been added.
The parmesanGrated cheese is passed separately, never stirred into the tureen. Stirring it in dulls and clouds a clear soup; each guest clouds their own portion if they wish.

A Little History

This entry comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he wrote after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a stock-list as much as a recipe. By the 1890s dried Italian pastes were arriving in American ports in quantity, and a large restaurant kitchen would have filed them in the French kitchen's mind as pates d'Italie rather than as Italian cooking in its own right. The two-stage treatment, blanch in water then finish in broth, is standard classical practice for any starch destined for a clear soup, and it is the same logic that governs garnish cookery generally: nothing goes into the tureen that will disturb what the saucier spent hours clarifying. Neige de Florence is the period detail here. Generally traced to Florence, it was a manufactured novelty rather than a kitchen preparation, and it remains obtainable from French suppliers today.