Original White House Cookbook

cheese and small pieces of butter, a bit of salt, then more macaroni, and so on, filling the dish ; sprinkle the top layer with a thick layer of cracker crumbs. Pour over the whole a teacupful of cream or milk. Set it in the oven and bake half an hour. It should be nicely browned on top. Serve in the same dish in which it was baked with a clean napkin pinned around it. TIMBALE OF MACARONI. Break in very short lengths small macaroni (vermicelli, spaghetti, tagliarini). Let it be rather overdone; dress it with butter and grated cheese; then work into it one or two eggs, according to quantity. Butter and bread crumb a plain mold, and when the macaroni is nearly cold fill the mold with it, pressing it well down and leaving a hollow in the centre, into which place a well-flavored mince of meat, poultry or game ; then fill up the mold with more macaroni, pressed well down. Bake in a moderately heated oven, turn out and serve. MACARONI A LA CREME. Boil one-quarter of a pound of macaroni in plenty of hot water, salted, until tender ; put half a pint of milk in a double boiler, and when it boils stir into it a mixture of two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour. Add two tablespoonfuls of cream, a little white and cayenne pepper ; salt to taste, and from one-quarter to one-half a pound of grated cheese, according to taste. Drain and dish the macaroni ; pour the boiling sauce over it and serve immediately. MACARONI AND TOMATO SAUCE. Divide half a pound of macaroni into four-inch pieces, put it into boiling salted water enough to cover it ; boil from fifteen to twenty minutes, then drain ; arrange it neatly on a hot dish and pour tomato sauce over it, and serve immediately while hot. See Sauces for tomato sauce. ★ ★ ★ TO MAKE BUTTER. Thoroughly scald the churn, then cool well with ice or spring water. Now pour in the thick cream; churn fast at first, then, as the butter forms, more slowly; always with perfect regularity; in warm weather, pour a little cold water into the churn, should the butter form slowly; in the winter, if the cream is too cold, add a little warm water to bring it to the proper temperature. When the butter has “come,” rinse the sides of the churn down with cold water and take the butter up with a perforated dasher or a wooden ladle, turning it dexterously just below the surface of the buttermilk to catch every stray bit; have ready some very cold water in a deep wooden tray; and into this plunge the dasher when you draw it from the churn; the butter will float off, leaving the dasher free. When you have collected all the butter, gather behind a wooden butter ladle and drain off the water, squeezing and pressing the butter with the ladle; then pour on more cold water and work the butter with the ladle to get the milk out, drain off the water, sprinkle salt over the butter — a tablespoonful to a pound; work it in a little and set in a cool place for an hour to harden, then work and knead it until not another drop of water exudes, and the butter is perfectly smooth, and close in texture and polish; then with the ladle make up into rolls, little balls, stamped pats, etc. The churn, dasher, tray and ladle, should be well scalded before using, so that the butter will not stick to them, and then cooled with very cold water.