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Macaroni and Round Steak
1/2 package macaroni 1/2 can tomatoes 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 2 onions Salt and pepper to taste ½ cupful grated cheese 1 lb. round steak ½ cupful breadcrumbs Break macaroni into inch lengths and add it with 1 tablespoonful of the Crisco to plenty of boiling water and boil twenty minutes, then drain. Put steak and onions through a food chopper. Put macaroni into Criscoed fireproof dish, then put in meat and onions, add seasonings, tomatoes, cheese, breadcrumbs, and remainder of Crisco melted. Bake in moderate oven one hour. 1 lb. round steak
A 1913 casserole built on cheap cuts and a pantry can. It works, but two things in the method need adjusting: the pasta is badly overcooked and the layers want mixing.
- Cut the macaroni's boilTwenty minutes of boiling followed by an hour in the oven gives paste. Boil the inch lengths 6 to 8 minutes, well short of al dente, and drain.
- Half a packageMacaroni packages of the period were often around a pound, so 8 oz dry is a reasonable reading. There is no need for fat in the cooking water.
- Half a can of tomatoesCans of this period varied; if it held about 20 oz, half is roughly 1¼ cups of tomatoes with their juice. Break up whole tomatoes before they go in.
- CriscoAny solid vegetable shortening substitutes directly; butter or oil will do and taste better. Three tablespoons total: one is no longer needed for the pasta water, so use it to grease the dish.
- Food chopperThis is a hand-cranked grinder. Ask a butcher to grind a pound of round, or pulse cubed steak in a processor with the onions until coarsely chopped, not pasted.
- Fireproof dishAn ovenproof casserole of about 2 quarts. "Fireproof" was often used for ware said to withstand direct heat as well as the oven, though the term was applied loosely; nothing here requires stovetop use.
- AssemblyLayering raw ground meat in a slab leaves it dense and grey. Toss the macaroni, meat, onions, tomatoes, seasoning and most of the cheese together, then top with the crumbs, reserved cheese and melted fat.
- Oven and timeA moderate oven is roughly 350-375F. An hour is right if the dish is well filled; check that the centre has reached 160F and brown the top under the broiler if it is pale. Serves about 4 to 6.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, which had introduced Crisco, a hydrogenated cottonseed oil shortening, two years earlier. The book's job was to teach cooks that a manufactured fat could stand in for lard and butter in every department of the kitchen, which is why Crisco appears four times in a dish that hardly needs it. The recipe itself belongs to the era's economy cookery: round steak was a lean, tough, inexpensive cut best dealt with by a hand food chopper, a common fixture in American kitchens of the period, and macaroni with canned tomatoes and cheese was a reliable way of stretching a single pound of meat across a family. Dishes of this shape, ground beef bound with pasta, tomato and a browned crumb crust, appear in American household books well before the mid-century casserole boom.