1 large head of celery or 2 small ones, 1 large Spanish onion, 2 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste, and 1 blade of mace. Chop the onion and fry it brown in the butter or Allinson vege-butter in the saucepan in which the soup is to be made. When brown, add 4 pints of water, the celery washed and cut into pieces, the mace, the pepper and salt. Let all cook until the celery is quite soft, then drain the liquid from the vegetables. Return it to the saucepan, boil the soup up, and add 1 oz. of vermicelli, sago, or Italian paste; let the soup cook until this is quite soft, and serve with sippets of crisp toast, or Allinson plain rusks.
This is better adapted for an Italian than an English palate. Take half a dozen heads of garlic and fry them in a little butter in order to remove the rankness of flavour. Take them out and pound them in a mortar with rather more than a tablespoonful of oil; heat this on the fire in a stew-pan, after adding some pepper and salt. Beat up an egg, and stir this in with the oil and garlic till the mixture gets thick. Arrange some slices of hard-boiled eggs--four eggs would be sufficient--pour this mixture in the centre, and serve.
2 oz. of macaroni, 1/2 pint of milk, 3 eggs, 3 oz. of Allinson fine wheatmeal, sugar to taste, the grated rind of a lemon, butter, and 1 whole lemon. Throw the macaroni into boiling water and boil until quite soft; drain it and cut it into pieces 1 inch long. Make a batter of the eggs, meal, and milk, add the lemon rind, sugar, and the macaroni; fry pancakes of the mixture, using a small piece of butter not bigger than a walnut for each pancake. Sift sugar over the pancakes and serve them very hot with slices of lemon.
The word nudel is probably derived from French nouilles paste. It is made in a similar manner, or nearly so. French cooks use only yolk of egg and flour. English cooks use beaten-up eggs, and sometimes even reserve the yolks for other purposes and make the paste with white of egg. In any case, the yolks, the whole eggs, or the white without the yolks, must be well beaten up and then mixed in with the flour with the fingers till it makes a stiff paste. This paste or dough is then rolled out with a straight rolling pin--(not an English one)--till it is as thin as a wafer. The board must be well floured or it will stick. A marble slab is best, and if you are at a loss for a rolling-pin try an empty black bottle. It is very important to roll the pastry thin, and it has been well observed that the best test of thinness is to be able to read a book through the paste. When rolled out, let each thin cake dry for five or ten minutes. If you have a box of cutters you can cut this paste into all sorts of shapes according to the shape of the cutters, or you can cut each thin cake into pieces about the same size, and then with a sharp dry knife cut the paste into threads. These threads or ornamental shapes can be thrown into boiling clear soup, when they will separate of their own accord. Nudel paste is, in fact, home-made Italian paste, or, when cut into threads, home-made vermicelli. It is very nourishing, as it is made with eggs and flour.
Take half a pound of macaroni and boil it in some slightly salted water, and let it boil and simmer till the macaroni is tender and absorbs all the water in which it is boiled. Now take a dessertspoonful of raw mustard, i.e., mustard in the yellow powder. Mix this gradually with the macaroni, and add five or six tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese and a little cayenne or white pepper according to taste. Turn the mixture out on to a dish, sprinkle some more grated Parmesan cheese over the top, bake it in the oven till it is slightly brown, pour a little oiled butter on the top, and serve.
Cut a large pumpkin into square pieces and boil them for about a quarter of an hour in salt and water, and take them out, drain them, and put them in a stew-pan with a little butter, salt, and grated nutmeg; fry them, sprinkle them with a little Parmesan cheese, and bake them for a short time in the oven till the cheese begins to melt, and then serve. This is an Italian recipe.
Sparghetti is a peculiar form of macaroni. Ordinary macaroni is made in the form of long tubes, and when macaroni pudding is served in schools, it is often irreverently nicknamed by the boys gas-pipes. Sparghetti is not a tube, but simply macaroni made in the shape of ordinary wax-tapers, which it resembles very much in appearance. In Italy it is often customary to commence dinner with a dish of sparghetti, and should the dinner consist as well of soup, fish, entree, salad, and sweet, the sparghetti would be served before the soup. Take, say, half a pound of sparghetti, wash it in cold water, and throw it instantly into boiling salted water; boil it till it is tender, about twenty minutes, drain it, put it into a hot vegetable-dish, and mix in two or three tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese; toss it about lightly with a couple of forks, till the cheese melts and forms what may be called cobwebs on tossing it about. Add also two tablespoonfuls of tomato conserve (sold by all grocers, in bottles), and serve immediately. This is very cheap, very satisfying, and very nourishing; and it is to be regretted that this popular dish is not more often used by those who are not vegetarians, who would benefit both in pocket and in health were they to lessen their butcher's bill by at any rate commencing dinner, like the Italians, with a dish of sparghetti.
This is very similar to sparghetti, only ordinary pipe macaroni is used. Take, say, a teacupful of macaroni, wash it, break it up into two-inch pieces, and throw it into boiling water that has been salted. Strain it of off, put it in the stew-pan for a few minutes, with a little piece of butter and some pepper and salt. Add a tablespoonful of tomato conserve, and serve it with some grated Parmesan cheese, served separate in a dish. Some rub the stew-pan with a head of garlic. This gives it what may be called a more foreign flavour, but this should not be done unless you know your guests like garlic. Unfortunately, the proper use of garlic is very little understood in this country. MACARONI CHEESE.--Some years back this was almost the only form in which macaroni was served in this country. Macaroni cheese used to be served at the finish of dinner in a dried-up state, and was perhaps one of the most indigestible dishes which the skill, or want of skill, of our English cooks was able to produce. Wash and then boil a quarter of a pound of macaroni in a little milk till it is quite tender, then put into a well-buttered oval tin a layer of macaroni, and cover this with a layer of bread-crumbs, mixed with grated cheese, and add a few little lumps of butter; then put another layer of macaroni and another layer of bread-crumbs and cheese. Continue alternate layers till you pile up the dish, taking care to have a layer of dried bread-crumbs at the top. Warm some butter, but do not oil it, and pour some of this warm butter over the top of the dish to moisten them; put the dish in the oven till it is hot through, then take it out and brown the top quickly with a red-hot salamander. If you leave the macaroni cheese in the oven too long the dish will taste oily and the cheese get so hard as to become absolutely indigestible. Any kind of grated cheese will do for this dish, but to the English palate it is best when made from a moist cheese similar to that which would be used in making Welsh rabbit.
Take half a pound of macaroni and throw it into boiling water that has been salted. In the meantime have ready four hard-boiled eggs. When the macaroni is nearly tender throw the hard-boiled eggs into cold water for a minute, in order to enable you to take off the shells without burning your fingers. Cut the eggs in half, take out the half yellow yolk without breaking it; cut the whites of the eggs into rings and mix these rings with the macaroni on the dish. The macaroni and eggs must be flavoured with pepper and salt, and if possible pour a little white sauce over the whole. If you have no white sauce add a little cream or a little thickened milk with a little butter dissolved in it; now sprinkle a little chopped blanched parsley over the whole and ornament the dish with the eight half-yolks.
3 oz. of boiled cold macaroni, 3 eggs, 1 dessertspoonful of finely chopped parsley, 1-1/2 oz. of grated cheese, 1/2 a saltspoonful of nutmeg, pepper and salt to taste, 1-1/2 oz. of butter. Cut the macaroni into little pieces; beat the eggs well, and mix them with the macaroni. Add the seasoning, parsley, cheese, and nutmeg; mix all well, and fry the omelet with the butter in a large frying-pan.
