Macaroni

History

As printed in The Virginia House-Wife (Mary Randolph, first published 1824), the dish is plain and quick: boil the macaroni in milk and water until quite tender, drain and salt it, layer it in a dish with cheese and butter "as in the polenta," and bake it the same way. The book — first published in 1824, republished at least nineteen times before the Civil War, and widely regarded as the first regional American cookbook — lists macaroni among its European-influenced recipes, and it is commonly described as the first U.S. cookbook to include a macaroni-and-cheese recipe.

Mary Randolph (1762–1828) ran a boarding house in Richmond, Virginia, and was connected by marriage to Thomas Jefferson: her brother Thomas Mann Randolph married Jefferson's daughter Martha. Her recipe appears in the period when baked macaroni with cheese was entering American cookery through the Monticello circle — Jefferson brought a macaroni maker from Naples after his years in France, and his enslaved chef James Hemings is credited with adapting the dish; the Library of Congress holds a drawing of Jefferson's design for a pasta machine.

The sources consulted do not document macaroni's social status in this period — neither as a "luxury" nor as a "staple of the urban middle class" — and none attaches such a characterization to this specific recipe, so no status claim is made here.

Ingredients

• macaroni
• milk and water
• salt
• cheese
• butter

Instructions

1. Boil the macaroni in milk and water until quite tender. Drain it on a sieve and sprinkle a little salt over it. Layer the macaroni in your dish, then add cheese and butter in the same proportions as used in the polenta. Bake in the same manner as the polenta.