Maccaroni a la Reine (Macaroni and Cheese)

Smooth and creamy mac and cheese with wonderful toasted bread crumbs and a hint of mace and cayenne at the end

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City/Region: England

Time Period: 1845

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The word macaroni has referred to any kind of pasta and to a dandy-like fashion (of “stuck a feather in his hat and called it” fame). The pasta (and the fashion) could only be afforded by the wealthy, appearing in fancy restaurants and with fancy names like this recipe’s, Maccaroni a la Reine. This dish is a classic pairing of cheese and pasta that is creamy with a wonderful toasty crunch of the bread crumbs. You can change this recipe up to suit your tastes, using any kind of white cheese that you like best and whatever amounts of cayenne and mace that you want.

“This is a very excellent and delicate mode of dressing maccaroni. Boil eight ounces in the usual way, and by the time it is sufficiently tender, dissolve gently ten ounces of any rich, well flavoured white cheese in full three-quarters of a pint of good cream; add a little salt, a rather full seasoning of cayenne, from half to a whole saltspoon of pounded mace, and a couple of ounces of sweet fresh butter. The cheese should, in the first instance, be sliced very thin, and taken quite free of the hard part adjoining the rind; it should be stirred in the cream without intermission until it is entirely dissolved, and the whole is perfectly smooth. The cheese may be poured equally over the macaroni. The whole, in either case, may be thickly covered before it is sent to table, with fine crumbs of bread fried of a pale gold colour…
Maccaroni, 1/2 lb. ; cheese, 10 ozs. ; good cream, 3/4 pint (or rich white sauce) ; butter, 2 ozs. (or more); little salt, fine cayenne, and mace.”

— Modern Cookery, for Private Families by Eliza Acton, 1845

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Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb (225 g) dried pasta, any shape you like
• A generous pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 10 oz (285 g) white cheese, thinly sliced (I used white cheddar)
• 1 3/4 cups (425 ml) cream
• 4 tablespoons (55 g) unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, more or less to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon mace*, more or less to taste
• Dried bread crumbs for topping, as much as you like

*See notes below.

Instructions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, then add the generous pinch of salt and the 1 tablespoon of butter and stir. Add the dried pasta and cook to your preferred degree of doneness.
2. In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer over medium heat. Add the cheese and stir constantly until it’s fully melted. Add the unsalted butter, salt, cayenne, and mace, and stir.
3. Toast the bread crumbs in a dry pan over low heat, stirring constantly so they don’t burn. Toast until they’re golden brown.
4. Drain the cooked pasta and put into a serving dish. Pour the sauce evenly over the pasta, making sure everything is coated, top with the toasted bread crumbs, and serve it forth.

Notes

• Mace comes from the outside of a nutmeg seed and tastes similar to nutmeg with notes of cinnamon and black pepper. It's used in a lot of historical recipes and is definitely worth getting.
• Link to mace: https://amzn.to/3SMkVJ5

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