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Macaroni Sauveterre
Plunge a pound of Italian macaroni into a gallon boiling water with a tablespoon salt and cook for thirty-five minutes. Drain on a sieve. Mix two ounces grated Swiss cheese with an ounce Parmesan cheese. Lightly butter a cocotte dish; place one-third of the macaroni in the pan, well spread over, and season with a saltspoon salt and a saltspoon white pepper. Dredge over a third part of the cheese, divide a half tablespoon fresh butter in small bits over, place another layer of macaroni, season the same as the first, dredge the same quantity cheese, and so on until finished. Pour a half gill cream over all, set in the oven to bake for thirty minutes, remove and serve.
A plain baked macaroni gratin from the French hotel repertoire, layered rather than sauced. Two numbers in it need adjusting before anything else.
- The boiling timeThirty-five minutes will reduce modern dried macaroni to paste, especially since it then bakes for another half hour. Boil it 2-3 minutes short of the package's al dente time — usually 6-8 minutes — and drain well. Long boiling times of this kind are common in period cookbooks.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, 350-375F, for 30 minutes suits this; the dish only needs to heat through and set the cheese.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. Between the three layers and the tablespoon in the pasta water, the total salt is modest for a pound of macaroni — taste before the last layer goes in.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so this is 1/4 cup. That is deliberately little: the result is a dry, cheesy gratin with distinct strands, not a creamy baked macaroni. If you want it closer to modern expectations, more cream can be added, but it stops being this dish.
- Cocotte dishIn 1906 a cocotte was a small round casserole, often individual. Any shallow 1.5-2 quart baking dish works; a wider dish gives more browned surface, which is most of the appeal here.
- The cheeses"Swiss" means Gruyère or Emmental — Gruyère melts better and carries more flavour. Two ounces of it to one of Parmesan for a whole pound of pasta is sparing; grate finely so the thirds spread evenly.
- BrowningThere is no crumb topping, and the recipe does not say explicitly whether the final layer gets cheese and butter, so the top may stay pale. Reserve a little of the cheese and a few bits of butter for the surface, or finish briefly under the broiler.
- YieldA pound of macaroni serves six as a side or four as a main course. It reheats poorly once the cheese has set twice — bake it to serve.
Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, built The International Cook Book (1906) out of the grand-hotel repertoire, in which nearly every dish carried a proper name: à la Sauveterre, à la Colbert, à la Dubarry. Sauveterre is the name of several communes in southwestern France, and garnish names of this kind were generally attached by chefs to honour a place, a patron or a colleague rather than to record any regional tradition — the connection here is decorative rather than documented. What the recipe does show plainly is one way Italian pasta could be treated in fine American dining: layered with Gruyère and Parmesan, buttered, creamed and baked in the French manner, as a gratin fit to sit beside a roast.