Fourteenth Century Macaroni Cheese

It’s Spring.

It’s snowing.

Eep.

For a girl brought up in the moderation of the Auckland climate this is more than a little disconcerting. It’s also cold. So what can you do other than huddle up at home in the warmth, with a glass of red wine and some comfort food? Definitely the best thing to do. Comfort food in this instance being a delicious hot dish of makerouns, otherwise known as medieval Macaroni cheese.

Contrary to popular thought, Marco Polo didn’t bring pasta back from China with him. Nor is there currently any solid evidence for pasta dishes in Roman cuisine. Previously pasta was thought to be descended from the Roman dish ‘tracta‘, but this is now considered to be a flour and water dough crumbled into boiling liquid for use as a thickener, and to bind sauces.¹ The word means ‘a sheet of dough’ and is also the meaning of another Roman dish, ‘lagana‘, which has also been claimed as the origin of pasta. However lagana/laganum additionally means ‘a thin cake fried in oil’ and was baked, not boiled, so the relationship to pasta is debatable.²

This is not to say medieval European pasta definitely didn’t evolve from Roman cuisine, but more probably pasta was introduced from the Middle East. There are several distinct types of pasta described in medieval Islamic cookbooks dating from the tenth century, and even earlier in Persian cuisine. In the fourteenth century the Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina, an Italian health handbook which is actually based on a C.12th Arabic manuscript, describes and depicts pasta noodles (see picture below), and specifically mentions the Arabic word for them.

English cookbooks contain pasta dishes as early as the thirteenth cenury – one of the Anglo-Norman cookery manuscripts (B.L.Add.32085) lists three. Firstly Cressee (#5), which is a decorative dish of saffron-coloured and plain uncoloured noodles criss-crossed into an eye-catching latticework and then boiled; Ravieles (#8), sweet dough ravioli stuffed with cheese and herbs; and finally Kuskenole (#25), fruit-stuffed pasta (or pastry?) that are boiled and then grilled.

The source of my recipe is “The Forme of Cury” (which roughly translates as The Method of Cookery/Cooking). This manuscript was written in the fourteenth century, compiled by the master chefs of King Richard II. It also contains a ravioli recipe, Rouioles (#94), this time stuffed with fresh farm cheese (‘wete chese‘), eggs, saffron and butter, then boiled and covered with more cheese and butter and powder douce (a standard mix of sweet spices such as cinnamon, sugar, ginger, etc). Definitely not a dish for cholesterol conscious! but delicious nonetheless.

The third pasta recipe in the manuscript is for Losyns (#50), a layered pasta dish such as lasagne. The manuscript instructs the cook to make ‘thynne foyles as paper with a roller; drye it harde‘. The pasta is then boiled in broth and layered with powder douce and a grated soft cheese similar to a young rindless Brie³, which is layered ‘so twyse or thryse‘ and then served.

The macaroni recipe I made is the most simple of the three, with the pasta being a water and flour mixture, although water, flour and egg pasta was also prevalent at the time. Macaroni, by the way, does not mean the little curly shapes we use nowadays and which are a later development. Here the pasta is flat strips or lozenges, paired with cheese and butter. An oldy (much older than you realised, right?) but a goody.

Tagliatelle (Noodles)
The housewife kneads the dough on a table with vigorous movements, and from time to time the young girls turn the noodles with light fingers as they hange them on the racks to dry. The dough – ‘trij’ in Arabic – is rich in nourishment and suited to those with hot stomachs, young people, the winter, and all regions. It is good for the chest and throat and is harmful only to people with weak stomachs or weak intestines, in which case barley sugar is the remedy. This is a food that should be ‘complete operato’, thoroughly and carefully prepared.
[picture & excerpt from Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina, C.14th Italian manuscript]

Original recipe:
Makerouns. Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh, and kerue it on peces, and cast hum on boillyng water & seeÞ it wele. Take chese and grate it, and butter imelte, cast bynethen and aboven as losyns; and serue forth.

Rough translation:
Macaroni. Take and make a thin sheet of dough, and carve/cut it into pieces, and cast them in boiling water and seeth/simmer/cook it well. Take cheese and grate it, and melted butter, cast beneath and above the lozenges; and serve it forth.

Makerouns – modern redaction:
2 cups pasta flour
water
1 cup soft white cheese, grated (I used Wensleydale but something like Brie or Edam or Jack would be good)
1 Tb butter, melted

1. Mix the water into the flour slowly, kneading all the time.
2. When the flour has reached a firm dough, run it through your pasta machine until smooth and non-stick. If you don’t have a pasta machine you get to do it the hard way, through continuous kneading and rolling with a rolling pin (which will show you that you definitely need a pasta machine!).
3. Roll the pasta until it’s very thin, then cut into strips. You can cut them into long lozenges (diamond shapes) if you want. If you don’t want to use the pasta immediately, hang it on a drying rack (or something similar) so it airs and dries evenly. Store in an airtight container or the fridge.
4. Heat either water or broth to boiling.
5. Cook the pasta in the water to al dente.
6. Put the pasta in a dish and cover with the cheese and butter.
7. Serve. Devour.

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Bibliography:

HIEATT, Constance B. & BUTLER, Sharon. (transcription) ANONYMOUS “Curye on Inglysch” (includes ‘The Forme of Cury’) London, Oxford Early English Text Society, 1985.

HIEATT, Constance B. & JONES, Robin F. (transl.) ANONYMOUS “Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii” Speculum Issue 61/4 1986
PERRY, Charles Old Non-Pasta Los Angeles Times – Los Angeles, Calif. 05 Mar 1997. Food section.
SPENCER, Judith (trans.) ANONYMOUS The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti (Tacuinum Sanitatis in Medicina) Outlet, June 1987. ISBN: 9780816001385
Stefan’s Floriligium Online collection of articles & discussions on medieval topics.

Notes:
1. PERRY, Charles Old Non-Pasta Los Angeles Times – Los Angeles, Calif. 05 Mar 1997. Food section. See also: PERRY, Charles “The Oldest Mediterranean Noodle: A Cautionary Tale.” Petit Propos Culinaires #9, pp.42-45. 1981.
2. Stefan’s Floriligium; post by GLONING, Thomas, 03 Oct 1999.
3. ‘chese ruayn‘ Ruayn being modern-day Rouen, France.