[Sca-cooks] Roman Mac and Cheese

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Wed Jan 20 04:17:37 PST 2010


On Jan 20, 2010, at 3:22 AM, Volker Bach wrote:

> Well - Romans as in 'inhabitants of the city of Rome', yes. But you can probably see where that statement is ambiguous.

Well, that and the source being Neapolitan, as well, even if it is Latin. Probably a majority of contemporary books were. On the other hand, "the Romans" also had Fettucine Alfredo -- in 1926. I'd also argue that macaroni is generally a dry pasta made from durum wheat, where this is a fresh pasta dough made from an unspecified flour. There are probably better period antecedents for macaroni and cheese. In fact, I'm fairly sure the same source has a recipe for dried tubular macaroni cooked in broth and served with butter, cheese and spices in essentially the same way.

That said, it's true that one cannot assume Caesar and Cicero when one hears "Roman", but when one hears that word, unqualified, the ancient civilization is usually a pretty safe assumption. In this case, not so safe.

Adamantius





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