This past weekend our dear Rumpofsteelskin shared a mac and cheese recipe he had found in a 300-year-old British manuscript. I love mac and cheese! And history! Two of my favorite things rolled up into one dish? I had to try it out.
I started out with the recipe below which I read as the following.
Two ounces of ___ Gloucester Cheese, 4 ounces of Cheshire___ grated – put it into a Stone Mortar with two Eggs, two or three Spoonfulls of Sack or Mountain Wine, beat it ’till it’s well moist and light- Boil the Maccarony in Water very tender, then drain it well, put it on a Dish or Plate and lay the prepared Cheese all over it and brown it with a Salamander
There were a few terms I wasn’t familiar with starting with the wines. I’ve drank wine out of a sack before and I know wine grapes can be grown in the mountains but I assumed the recipe was referring to something a little more specific. Some digging around revealed that Sack wine is an antiquated name for Sherry and Mountain wine is an antiquated name for Malaga. Luckily my local wine shop actually carried a Sherry sack wine from Jerez de la Frontera.
The cheeses were more straightforward as they are still produced in England to this day. Unfortunately they are not carried at my local Whole Foods so, as patience is not one of my many virtues, I worked with the staff there to find some good substitutes instead of tracking down the real deal. Gloucester cheese is like a nutty-flavored Gouda and luckily they had one on hand. Cheshire cheese is supposedly a mild-cheddar-like cheese so we went with an English cheddar. Some poking around after the fact revealed you can actually order the real cheeses online. I didn’t find anywhere that delivered to the States but I’m sure a little determination would yield a source.
The final step called for the dish to be browned with a Salamander which I now know thanks to my lovely Crassers looks like this…
… not this.
I actually went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond looking for a Salamander and got a blank stare from the salesperson (See! I’m not the only one who didn’t know what it was so phooey on you guys for making me feel like a dork about it!). My do-it-yourself solution was to use my cast iron skillet which I heated in the oven on high broil. I finally had my ingredients assembled and was ready to go.
I went with a fine grate for the cheese to make it easier to mash into a paste. I figured it was not an exact science with the amount of cheese but I made sure I kept the ratio to twice as much of my Cheshire substitute to the amount of the Gloucester substitute I used.
The recipe called for two or three spoonfuls of wine so I went with three because MORE (thanks Jimmy Fallon and your Capital One commercials). It didn’t specify teaspoon or tablespoon so I split the difference and used a dessertspoon (dsp). The initial plan was to split the sauce ingredients in half for mixing as my mortar and pestle didn’t look big enough to do it all at once. Once I got the first half in there it was mashing down pretty well and I was confident it would all fit. Wrong! I ended up transferring it to a bowl and mixing it with a fork losing half of the white of the second egg in the process. I then transferred it back to the mortar and pestle because it made for a much prettier picture.
Once my noodles were boiled I poured the cheese sauce over them and it melted quite nicely. The sauce to noodle ratio didn’t look great so I grated some more of the mild cheddar over it. My do-it-yourself Salamander solution was actually kind of working but I think I would have had to leave it on the dish for a good five or ten minutes and by this time I was just ready to eat it. At the point where I gave up the top really was starting to bake a little but was not quite brown.
I paired the dish with some pickles, hard salami, and a Strongbow (of course). As I enjoyed the fruits of my labor I thought of the English gentleman who may have enjoyed a similar meal some 300 years ago after a long day brutalizing my Irish ancestors.
The verdict? The texture really was that of your standard run-of-the-mill mac and cheese. The taste was like an earthy cheddar and ale soup. When I say earthy I mean it actually reminded me of the time a five-year-old Piece ate a few blades of grass just to see what they tasted like. The nutty Gloucester substitute I had used balanced out the strong taste of Sherry quite nicely. I would say if you like Sherry you would definitely like this dish. I unfortunately do not like Sherry so if I was going to make it again I think I would tweak a few things.
[Salamander Image I]
[Salamander Image II]
All other photos are the copyrighted work of the author.
