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Macaroni (Bologna Parboil in plenty)
(Bologna.) Parboil in plenty of salted water 1/2 pound of macaroni, drain it, add sufficient white stock to cover it, and cook until tender and all the broth is absorbed, then put it in a shallow dish, grate cheese over it, adding 1/2 pound of sliced and parboiled mushrooms; brown slightly with a salamander, and serve with spinach.
MACARONI.(Genoa.) Boil 8 ounces for 20 minutes in salted water, drain it, add 1 quart of consomme; when cooked and absorbed, add 1 teaspoonful of French mustard mixed with 1 ounce of butter and 1/4 pound grated cheese, some pepper, and a teaspoonful of onion juice. Stir well, add crumbs over the top, and bake until brown.
SPAGHETTI.(Prevailing method all over Italy.) Wash and parboil 1/2 pound of spaghetti, drain it, add 1 pint of stewed tomatoes, mixed with a little stock or beef extract, some chopped onion and herbs, also a small piece of ham, cut up. This must be cooked for 20 minutes, then strained and seasoned, before pouring it over the spaghetti. Italians also use a clove of garlic in this sauce, but that can be left out. Stir the spaghetti well; serve with a plateful of grated Parmesan cheese.
Three regional treatments of dried pasta, all built on the same idea: the pasta is only part-cooked in water, then finishes by absorbing stock. That method still works, but the timings assume a much harder, slower-cooking pasta than anything sold today.
- The hinge: pasta finished in stockThe pasta must come out of the water genuinely underdone, because it does most of its cooking in the broth. Boil it 4 to 5 minutes rather than the 20 the Genoa version calls for, then let it drink the stock over low heat, stirring, until the liquid is gone.
- Stock quantitiesA quart of consomme to 8 ounces of pasta is far more than modern dried macaroni will absorb. Add it in ladlefuls as it is taken up and stop when the pasta is tender; expect to use roughly half. The Bologna version's "sufficient to cover" is the sounder instruction.
- SalamanderA flat iron plate heated in the fire and held over a dish to brown the top. A broiler set high, with the dish 4 to 5 inches beneath it, does the same work in two or three minutes.
- French mustardDijon, or something close to it: smooth, mild, made with vinegar or wine. Not the bright yellow American type, which is coloured with turmeric and will show in the dish.
- White stockAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock, unsalted and lightly gelatinous. Any good low-sodium chicken stock stands in, but salt at the end rather than the beginning, since the liquid reduces to nothing.
- Washing the spaghettiSkip it. Dried pasta of the period was often sold loose rather than sealed, which may explain the instruction; packaged dried pasta needs no washing.
- Onion juiceGrate a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve; a small onion yields roughly a teaspoonful.
- MushroomsHalf a pound of mushrooms parboiled and sliced will be watery. Sauté them in butter until they release and reabsorb their liquid instead, then fold them in before browning.
- Oven and yieldThe recipe gives no oven temperature, only 'bake until brown'; a hot oven, around 400F, will colour the crumbs in 15 to 20 minutes. Each of the three serves three to four as a first course, or two as a main dish with the spinach.
This page belongs to the genre of late-Victorian and Edwardian travel cookery, in which a writer collected dishes abroad and reported them back to English-speaking households as souvenirs of specific cities. The attributions to Bologna, Genoa and "the prevailing method all over Italy" are doing that work: in Britain and America macaroni was as often met in sweet puddings or milk-and-cheese bakes, and the point here was to show that Italians treated it as a savoury dish finished in broth and dressed with Parmesan. The parenthetical permission to leave the garlic out of the spaghetti sauce suggests an expectation that strong alliums would not suit every English palate. The sauce is also strained before it is poured, a mark of a formally trained kitchen, though sieved tomato sauces are hardly unknown in Italy.