Spaghetti
In cooking spaghetti, take care you do not cook it too much. The fault with this variety of Italian paste when prepared in American households, is that it is cooked too long. Fourteen minutes boiling in slightly salted water should be sufficient. To make the dark sauce served with it in Italian resorts, brown one large chopped onion in butter and stir in one heaping teaspoonful of browned flour. Add one-fourth pound of raw beef, finely minced, a sprig of parsley, a piece of bay leaf, three cloves and one quart of water. Let this simmer until much reduced; season to taste and strain over the spaghetti. Add a layer of grated Parmesan and serve.
This is not a modern ragù but a strained brown gravy built on minced beef, closer to a light jus. Two things decide whether it works: how far you reduce the quart of water, and how briefly you cook the pasta.
- The reduction is the dishThe recipe says only "simmer until much reduced," with no volume or time given. A quart of water with a quarter pound of minced beef will take a long, bare simmer to concentrate; stop short and you will strain thin, greyish liquid over the pasta.
- Browned flourFlour toasted in a dry pan over medium heat until it smells nutty and turns the colour of light sand. It thickens less than raw flour, so the heaping teaspoon here gives body rather than a true thickened sauce.
- Fourteen minutesLonger than most dried pasta now needs; modern spaghetti runs about 8 to 11 minutes depending on brand and thickness, so start tasting two minutes before the box says. Note that the recipe's own point is that fourteen minutes is already the maximum, not the minimum.
- "Slightly salted"Under-salted by current practice. Use about a tablespoon of salt per four quarts of water, since this sauce is strained and contributes little seasoning of its own.
- StrainingThe beef, parsley, bay and cloves are all discarded once they have given up their flavour. Press the solids firmly in the sieve to get everything out, then check the seasoning again after straining.
- Cloves and bayThree whole cloves in a sauce this reduced is assertive; two is closer to modern taste. Note that the recipe already calls for a piece of bay leaf rather than a whole one.
- ParmesanGrate it yourself from a wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano or a good grana; pre-grated tubs are drier and duller. The recipe adds it as a layer on top rather than stirring it in.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of spaghetti. The sauce as written is modest once reduced and strained, enough to dress a small quantity of pasta for two or three.
The recipe's whole argument is against overcooking, which tells you how spaghetti was actually being served in American households at the time: boiled to softness, sometimes finished in milk or tomato and baked. "Italian resorts" here means Italian restaurants, and the sauce described is a strained brown meat gravy of the kind French and Italian professional kitchens both used, rather than the chunky tomato sauces that would come to define spaghetti in America a generation later. Parmesan was one of the few Italian ingredients reliably available to the book's readers.