ORIGINAL AMERICAN RECIPES: CAKES, SWEETS AND COOKIES ACCORDING TO TRADITION

How many times, watching a movie or a TV series, has your mouth been watering to observe the protagonists intent on enjoying a stringy and steaming plate of mac'n'cheese ?

Today we will learn how to turn this desire into reality, since this is a rather simple recipe to prepare and that requires very common basic ingredients!

But let's go in order: where did this cheese-based delicacy come from?


1 The origins of Macaroni and Cheese
2 The original American recipe for Macaroni and Cheese: ingredients and preparation
The origins of the Macaroni and Cheese
The history of this dish is lost in the folds of time. The first traces would seem to be decidedly European : in the 14th century , in fact, there already existed a French book ( Liber de Coquina , one of the oldest medieval cookbooks, preserved in the National Library of Paris) where we mentioned a recipe for pasta casseroles and cheese; a similar dish, called  makeroun , was reported, then, in another medieval cookbook, this time English, entitled The  forme of Cury .

The modern recipe, instead, appears for the first time, with lots of cheddar cheese among the ingredients, in the book The Experienced English Housekeeper by Elizabeth Raffald , dated 1770 .

At this point, however, the events suffer a bifurcation: in fact, we talk about US history and Canadian history.

In the first case, we must introduce the figure of the American president Thomas Jefferson : it is said that, together with his cook (and slave) James Hemings , he found himself in front of this delicious riot of Parisian flavors, so intense and tasty that it deserved that his recipe was brought home. Jefferson would even have drawn a sketch of this dish, accompanied by detailed notes, and would have taken everything to Monticello , his large plantation, set up after inheriting his father's lands.

In 1793 he tried to realize this desire of his palate by commissioning the purchase of a particular machine from the American ambassador in Paris, but it was a failure, so much so that the president, in the end, imported both macaroni and parmesan in Monticello. It had to wait a few more years: in 1802, Jefferson served on the table, at a state dinner, " a pie called macaroni ", receiving the criticisms of the Reverend Manasseh Cutler . Controversy that, as often happens, evidently did nothing but make the dish more popular, because since then the macaroni with cheese began to invade the USA.

Moreover, a recipe almost identical to the current one with macaroni, butter and cheese also appears in the recipe book of the American author Mary Randolph , dated 1824 ( The Virginia Housewife ), which gave the "La" to a global insertion of the culinary process in many others cookbooks of the era and even later.

Finally, industrialization certainly made the main ingredients easier to find, so that over time the dish became more accessible, but it did not for this reason lose its leading role in high-level dinners .

And Canadian history?

We know that the recipe was also brought to Canada by British immigrants and that it has been present in its social fabric, even in this case, for a very long time (an example is the Modern Pracery Cookery , from 1845). The procedure is somewhat more sought after with puff pastry, cream, egg yolks, nutmeg, mustard and a sprinkling of grated Parmesan (or Cheshire cheese or, again, Canadian cheddar).

There are many Americans who, entangled in the frenzy of everyday life, choose the pre - cooked variant of this dish: among the various proposals, the Kraft Triple Cheese is particularly tempting because it is enriched with 3 different cheeses and available in practical single-portion trays to be baked in the microwave and enjoy in 3 minutes!

But, if you want to bring the famous mac'n'cheese freshly prepared to the table, here is the original recipe!

The original American recipe for Macaroni and Cheese: ingredients and preparation
As we said earlier, this is a recipe that can be made easily and quickly.
Below, the ingredients for 3-4 people:

Cheddar cheese - 200 grams;
Short pasta - 300 grams;
Butter - 60 grams;
Flour 00 - 40 grams;
Milk - 800 ml;
Parmesan - 50 grams;
Nutmeg;
Salt;
Pepper;
Bread crumbs.
The preparation of Macaroni and Cheese is also very simple. Cheddar (the famous English cheese) is cut into very small pieces.

In a saucepan, then, mix butter and flour, cooking and stirring over a slow flame so that the mix becomes a homogeneous and creamy mixture. In the meantime, heat the milk to be added to bring it to a boil and add the chopped cheddar, grated Parmesan and spices (nutmeg, pepper and salt).

As you continue to stir, a creamy sauce will come out very similar to the béchamel sauce that will be used to season the pasta. The latter is cooked al dente and placed in a bowl, still steaming, to be mixed with the cream cheese just obtained.

At this point we proceed with the phase that makes this dish so greedy: we butter a baking dish, we dust it with breadcrumbs which, in this way, will adhere to the walls and we will pour the pasta mixed with the sauce, to cook it again, together with a new sprinkling of parmesan cheese in the oven. The ideal is to keep it, for about twenty minutes at 200 ° C . The surface will thus become a crispy crust , even in the base where the presence of breadcrumbs, toasted by the action of the oven, creates a particularly tasty "wrapper" in which to sink the fork to discover all the creaminess of the internal stringy cheese!

A real pleasure!