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Spaghetti Au Gratin
Plunge three-quarters of a pound of spaghetti into three quarts boiling water with a teaspoon salt for twenty-five minutes. Drain well on a sieve, place in a saucepan with one ounce good butter, adding two light tablespoons flour; mix well with a fork, then pour in one and a half gills hot milk and one gill cream. Season with a half teaspoon salt, a light saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix well for two minutes, let cook for five minutes longer, then add one ounce grated Swiss cheese and one ounce grated Parmesan cheese; stir well with a wooden spoon till thoroughly mixed. Transfer the spaghetti into a baking dish, sprinkle a very little grated Swiss cheese over and set to bake in a brisk oven for fifteen minutes, remove and serve.
A plain béchamel-bound macaroni cheese, written in the ounce-and-gill idiom of a pre-war professional kitchen. Two things need attention: the pasta timing and the odd order in which the sauce is built.
- Boil the spaghetti far lessTwenty-five minutes may reflect a heavier dried pasta than today's, but it will reduce modern spaghetti to paste. Cook 8-10 minutes, or two minutes short of the package time, since it finishes in the oven.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of milk is 3/4 cup and one gill of cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon; the "light saltspoon" of cayenne means a scant pinch.
- A brisk ovenBrisk means hot, roughly 400-425F. Fifteen minutes at that heat is enough to set the top and brown the cheese, no more.
- Build the sauce separatelyAs written, the butter and flour go in with the drained pasta and the milk follows, which makes lumps almost inevitable. Cook the butter and flour together for a minute or two in the empty pan, whisk in the warm milk and cream, then return the spaghetti.
- Swiss cheeseIn this period "Swiss" means Gruyère or Emmental, not the wrapped deli slices. Gruyère melts smoothly and carries the nutmeg better.
- Cheese quantityTwo ounces of cheese for three-quarters of a pound of pasta is restrained by current taste. Doubling it will not hurt the sauce, though add it off the heat so it does not string.
- YieldServes four as a main course, six as a side. Use a shallow two-quart baking dish so there is plenty of browned surface.
Baked macaroni with cheese and a white sauce was thoroughly international by the time this book was compiled: Italian in origin, filtered through French kitchen technique, and standard on American hotel menus. The recipe's construction gives away that history he the b cehamel