Macrows
- 1 lb. noodles
- 1/2 cup or more grated parmesan
- 2 tbsp of butter or to taste
Boil noodles in salted water until tender. The
amount of time depends on the kind of pasta. Check the package. Place half of the noodles
in a servid dish. Sprinkle with half the cheese and half the butter. Repeat with the
remaining halves of the ingredients and serve.
Boccaccio, in his Decameron, describes a mountain of
finely grated parmesan cheese in the mythical land of Bengodi. On the top are people who
make nothing but macaroni and noodles brewed in capon broth. The pasta is cooked "al
dente" and tossed with farm fresh butter before it rolls down the mountain, gathering
parmesan as it goes to its final destination - the open mouths of the citizens below.
It is rather well known that spaghetti was invented
by the Chinese. The recipe is listed in a cookbook date about 1000 BC. Eventually, the
dish worked its wasy westward to India, where it was called "servika," which
means thread. It soon worked its way over to Persia, where it was called
"rishta," also meaning thread.
People were eating pasta in Italy at least thirteen
years before Marco Polo returned from Cathay, and possibly as early as the eleventh
century. Many wealthy Italians of the period had Tartar (Mongol) slaves, who would have
been able to prepare this dish for them. From Italy, just like the Renaissance and the
plague, pasta worked its way north to France and England. Pasta was in England by the
fifteenth century. We know this because thaere are recipes in the Two Fifteenth Century
Cookery Books and The Forme of Cury. A sixteenth century Italian engraving of a typical
kitchen shows people making pasta. The Etruscans developed the recipe for parmesan cheese.
The Romans adopted it because the great wheels traveled so well.
A menu for a banquet given by Pope Pius V in 1570
lists parmesan cheese. The recipe for Macrows in The Forme of Cury is what I would call
macaroni and cheese:
"Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh, and
kerve it on pieces, and cast hem on boilling water & seep it wele; take chese and
grate it and butter cast hynethen and above as losyns and serve forth."
A Boke of Gode Cookery/Modern Recipes
for Beginners
Macrows © 1997 Rebecca A.
C. Smith |
