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Macaroni a La Corinna
(Maccheroni alla Corinna) Put on the fire a pot with two quarts of salted water to which add a small piece of butter. When it begins to boil put in it 3/4 lb. macaroni. Let 1 it boil for five minutes, then drain them in a colander. Put them again in new boiling water, prepared as above and let them cook on a slow fire. Drain them again. Cover the bottom of a plate with macaroni and cover this first layer with grated cheese and with some vegetables in macédoine, that is, chopped fine and fried brown with butter. Repeat the draining, moisten the macaroni with the water in which they have previously cooked and keep on a low fire for ten minutes more.
The Macédoine of vegetables can be made with a dozen Bruxelles sprouts or one cabbage, half a dozen big asparagus cut in little pieces, a carrot cut in thin slices, a dozen small onions, some turnips and half a dozen mushrooms. The mushrooms and the asparagus can be omitted.
Melt some butter in a saucepan and when the turnips, the carrots and the onions are half cooked, add the cabbage or sprouts. Put in some water and some more butter, boil for ten minutes and then add the mushrooms and the asparagus, adding salt and pepper, and a little sugar if this is desired. 19 MACARONI "AU GRATIN" (Maccheroní al gratin) B Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender and drain them. Butter slightly a fireproof casserole and lay on the bottom some grated cheese and grated bread. Alternate the layers of cheese with macaroni and on the top layer of macaroni put more cheese and bread grated. Over the whole pour some melted butter, cover the casserole, (or pyrex plate) and put it in the oven with a low fire. Keep for ten minutes or more, until the top appears browned. 20
A layered baked macaroni built on a mixed vegetable macédoine. The method reads oddly because it comes from an era when factory macaroni was long-cooked and often par-boiled in changes of water; the layering and the moistening with cooking water are what matter.
- Skip the double boilingThe two-stage cooking — five minutes, drain, then fresh boiling water — is a period habit with long-cooked dried factory macaroni; the recipe gives no reason for it. With modern dried pasta it is unnecessary and only makes the finished dish softer. Boil once in well-salted water and stop several minutes short of tender, since the pasta finishes in the pan.
- Save the cooking waterThe instruction to moisten the layers with the water the macaroni cooked in matters: that water carries some starch, which helps the butter and cheese cling to the pasta. Plain water is less likely to do the same.
- QuantitiesThree-quarters of a pound of macaroni in two quarts of water is a thin ratio by current standards — use four quarts so the pasta moves freely. The dish as written serves four generously, or six as a first course.
- MacédoineHere it means simply a mixture of vegetables cut small, not the sweet fruit dessert of the same name. Cut everything to roughly the same dice so the carrot and turnip finish with the sprouts.
- Vegetable timingThe sequence is deliberate: root vegetables and onions first, cabbage or sprouts next, mushrooms and asparagus last. Follow it, or the asparagus will collapse before the carrot softens.
- Grated cheeseThe recipe says only 'grated cheese'; in an Italian collection of this kind that most likely means Parmesan, grated fine and dry. A well-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano or similar hard grating cheese works; anything soft may turn oily under the lid.
- FinishingTen minutes over a low flame with the pan covered is enough to melt the cheese and marry the layers. If you prefer a browned top, finish it uncovered in a moderate oven — the book gives no temperature, calling only for 'a low fire' in the oven in the gratin recipe that follows.
Italian cookbooks of this period leaned heavily on French vocabulary, which still carried more culinary authority in English-speaking kitchens than Italian did.