In celebration of the 250th anniversary of America, the American Heritage Center staff curated an exhibit called Wyoming Voices: Our Stories of America to showcase the ways in which people across Wyoming have gathered and communicated with each other. Cookery has a way of bringing people together, and wherever cookbooks are found so are networks of women who prepare and share cultural and familial recipes. As cultural artifacts, cookbooks respond to the needs of communities in specific times and places. Through all of this, some dishes emerge as iconic symbols of what it means to be American. One such dish is macaroni and cheese.
For over 2,000 years, macaroni and cheese has indelibly linked people across time, class, race, and culture. Many readers here may be drawn to this post because macaroni and cheese lives somewhere in their memories. As food historian Karima Moyer-Nocchi of The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese shows, this dish has jumped borders and oceans and moved from elite dining tables to become an economical dinner staple.
The irresistible bowl of tubular pasta dripping in creamy, orange cheese dates its earliest ancestor to 160 BCE in Ancient Rome. Not so tubular in shape, placenta (pronounced like plakenta) was the first recipe to combine dough and cheese to create a lasagna-like dish. A reserve of the elite palate, placenta was covered in goat or sheep cheese and sweetened with honey. Into the Early Modern period, it was common to sweeten macaroni and cheese dishes with cinnamon and sugar. The expense of these sweeteners—before the spice trade helped reduce their cost—contributed to macaroni and cheese’s history as a dish for the wealthy.
By the late 1500s, macaroni and cheese had jumped to England and France. French culinary artists and their cookbooks were the first to opt for salt and pepper over cinnamon. Macaroni pasta itself and the type of cheese used continued to affect the dish’s affordability. Durum wheat used to make macaroni was extremely difficult to produce without exacting technique and climatic conditions. Parmesan cheese was also an expensive commodity, and although many recipes called for it, less expensive cheeses like Gruyère and English Cheshire were commonly pointed to as suitable substitutes. When America perfected Cheddar cheese in the 1790s and began exporting it back to Europe, it, too, found its way into macaroni and cheese recipes.
Macaroni and cheese officially crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the American colonies as French and English cookbooks were picked up by American presses. Perhaps the most well-known early macaroni and cheese recipe comes from Elizabeth Raffald’s (1733-1781) The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769). Although using recipes without giving credit to their original source was common in cookbooks, Raffald’s is still one of the most plagiarized versions. This is true for a community cookbook put together by the Laramie Civic League.
Not only does this recipe read like it is 200 years old, but it is also an interesting combination of macaroni and cheese recipes in Raffald’s, Richard Briggs’ and Eliza Leslie’s (1787-1858) cookbooks. The “gill of milk” (¼ pint) echoes Raffald while the use of a “red-hot” shovel to broil the top shows up in Leslie’s version, an alternative to the salamander broiler called for in Briggs’ version. Another peculiarity of Katherine Greenaway’s contribution to Frontier Favorites is the direction to wash the macaroni. Before it was mass produced in factories, macaroni pasta crossed oceans by ship stored in barrels where bugs liked to burrow in the tubular shapes. Some cookbook authors recommend this preemptive washing while others say that the boiling process suffices.
Macaroni and cheese in colonial America would have been perfected by enslaved Black cooks as they were fluent in American, French, and English culinary traditions as well as those of their own cultures. Perhaps one of the most widely propagated myths around macaroni and cheese involves Thomas Jefferson and his slave, James Hemings. It is true that Jefferson was a fervent lover of macaroni and cheese, having ordered hundreds of pounds of macaroni pasta between 1803 and his death in 1826. It is also true that Jefferson brought Hemings with him to France when he took up the Minister Plenipotentiary post to have Hemings classically trained in the French culinary arts. Hemings mastered French delicacies like macaroni and cheese and likely cooked it often at Monticello. However, Hemings neither left a written recipe nor cooked macaroni and cheese in the presidential kitchens. Rather, it was Edith Hern Fossett, another of Jefferson’s enslaved cooks, who moved to the Presidential House where she probably made macaroni and cheese ad nauseum for Jefferson and his guests.
The idea of macaroni and cheese as a signature American food really began to take shape in the 19th century. As countries endured economic downturns, cookbooks of this era emphasized cheap, no-nonsense recipes to their new middle-class readership. In her cookbook, Mrs. Lincoln wrote, “Macaroni is a nutritious and economical food, and should be used more extensively than it is.” Another 19th century development in the history of macaroni and cheese was its utility for the growing vegetarian movement. Indeed, macaroni and cheese is often found in the vegetable and salad sections of cookbooks published in the second half of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, including those of Mary Tyson Rorer and Olive Green.
Macaroni and cheese became even more reliable as a staple for cash-strapped families when America figured out how to produce durum wheat in home soil in the late 19th century. Industrialization also enabled macaroni to be produced en masse and cheaply. The cleanliness of factory production was a favorite marketing technique that heightened macaroni’s suitability for growing children.
With the onset of World War I, macaroni and cheese became a star of wartime conservation. It was championed by the federal government for its cheap overhead production cost and its ability to feed whole families a nutritious, patriotic meal. By this point, James Lewis Kraft had patented shelf-stable, pasteurized cheese. Fast-cooking packages of macaroni like Tenderoni and Creamettes quickly became economical staples, especially when the Great Depression strained families’ wallets through the 1930s. In 1937, Kraft debuted a blockbuster idea: boxed macaroni and cheese. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner cost less than twenty cents a box and dialed hours-long processes in the kitchen down to less than ten minutes. During World War II, a single ration ticket could buy two boxes of Kraft.
The popularity of macaroni and cheese lies in its capacity since the beginning of the 19th century to communicate core American values and bridge the communities that make America what it is. Community cookbooks have remained a part of our cookbook culture since the Civil War when networks of women turned their culinary knowledge and skills into cash for the war effort. Even into the present day, community cookbooks are a way for any organization from schools and churches to animal shelters and civic groups to fundraise for their respective causes. These cookbooks often have casserole sections where macaroni and cheese dishes fit nicely, but what truly ties them all together is that they pull together comfort food recipes that define the communities that relied on them.
Given the centuries-long history of macaroni and cheese, it is almost impossible to say that there is one “true” macaroni and cheese recipe. Perhaps that is not the point. This means that macaroni and cheese can remain a staple for the masses and continue to play a role in various cultures across time and place. Whether you try out one of these recipes from the Toppan Rare Books collection or stick to the tried-and-true boxed macaroni and cheese, remember the culinary journey that macaroni and cheese has taken to get to your table. To all who celebrate, happy National Macaroni and Cheese Day!
Post contributed by Toppan Rare Books Library Archives Specialist Emma Comstock.
References
Briggs, Richard. The New Art of Cookery, according to the Present Practice; being a Complete Guide to all Housekeepers on a Plan Entirely New. Philadelphia: W. Spotswood, R. Campbell, and B. Johnson, 1792. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-english-art-of-cook_briggs-richard_1792/mode/2up
Leslie, Eliza. Domestic French Cookery. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1836. https://archive.org/details/domesticfrenchco00lesl/page/n3/mode/2up
Moyer-Nocchi, Karima. The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese: From Ancient Rome to Modern America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2026.
Raffald, Elizabeth. The Experienced English House-keeper, for the Use and Ease of Ladies, House-keepers, Cooks, &c. Printed by J. Harrop. London: Fletcher and Anderson, 1769. https://archive.org/details/b30522134/page/n3/mode/2up
Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
