Macaroni-And-Cheese Dish Can Whet An Appetite For History

Every now and then, I get this sort of seizure - a mad impulse to cook something and then blow off about it in print. The moment is at hand.

Today, we will discuss macaroni and cheese, damn the cholesterol.

The Italians, particularly those around Naples, claim the patent on this heavenly dish. But the Italians didn't get around to monopolizing macaroni and cheese until about the 14th century.

The Chinese, who probably invented everything else, made macaroni as long ago as 5,000 B.C. A discussion on how to make this food paste would run off the page and probably put my seven loyal readers to sleep.

Anyway, the Italians were the first Europeans to turn out macaroni-like products.

So the other day, I called Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, and said, "Tell me all you know about macaroni and cheese."

The Frug pointed out that he has a macaroni-and-cheese recipe in his book, "The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American."

"Not only that," he said, "but do you know who brought macaroni and cheese to America? Thomas Jefferson, that's who!"

I should have known.

Jefferson, a philosopher, an inventor, a developer and a founding father of American democracy, brought much of French cooking to America (including, I am told, a few illegal spices).

Indeed, the Italians carefully guarded their macaroni expertise for a full century.

To give school kids a true measure of Jefferson's range and depth of intellect, we must hark back to a White House dinner hosted by then-President John F. Kennedy.

The occasion was to honor a gathering of Nobel Prize winners. Kennedy described the dinner as "probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house, except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone."

Anyway, it was "T.J.," as they call him on the U. of Virginia campus (he founded and designed that school, by the way), who got macaroni and cheese into America's gustatory mainstream.

We have been nuts about the dish ever since. Actually, making macaroni and cheese has as many variations as there are ways to promote romance.

Volume 7 of the 12-volume Woman's Day cooking encyclopedia records no fewer than 27 recipes for macaroni - with cheese, crab, shrimp, clams, etc. But cheese is macaroni's spiritual helpmate.

The Frug himself lists one recipe from Jefferson's Monticello cookbook. Simplicity it is:

Boil two cups of macaroni, add 1/4 pound of grated white or yellow cheese and 1/4 pound of butter. Bake at 350 degrees about 15 minutes.

For another version, we turn to Helen Mathers. Helen is a splendid cook who passed on her expertise to her daughter, Gretchen, who is now president of the Washington State Restaurant Association.

Helen describes her version as a "hand-me-down recipe" from her mother, a recipe modified over time.

In Mathers' recipe, again we start by boiling one cup of macaroni. You can double or quadruple this recipe according to the size of your family and your casserole dish.

Anyway, one cup cooked macaroni. Then a cup of milk. Then a cup of shredded cheddar cheese - Helen prefers sharp; so do I. You can even add more cheese if your taste buds are having a slow day.

Salt and pepper, sure. Now mix in a beaten egg. Bake at 325 degrees until done. Take as many curtain calls as you like.

The Frug adds one more patriotic tidbit to the history of macaroni-and-cheese dishes. Remember the song in which Yankee Doodle Dandy stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni?

Well, it was originally a British song, meant to deride these uppity colonists. But the colonists adopted the song and sang it right back at the Brits and King George.

The British never forgave us for taking their song away from them. And King George, it can safely be said, never forgave Thomas Jefferson for writing all that seditious prose.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.