Mary Ann's Blog
Buon Compleanno America!
June 30, 2026
As we celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation, undoubtedly, we will do so enjoying favorite foods like hot dogs and hamburgers and I’ll bet that a macaroni salad or a mac and cheese casserole will also be among them which would make one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, a true Italophile, very happy.
Jefferson loved good food, especially French food which he enjoyed in his role an ambassador to France and where his fondness for macaroni pie developed so much so that he sent his personal enslaved chef, James Hemings to France to become schooled in the ways of French cuisine. We have no written recipe from Hemings, but macaroni pie was a favorite dish on Jefferson’s table and a frequently requested one at state dinners that he hosted at Monticello and in the White House.
Many versions of the recipe have emerged from historical sources on what the ingredients were; we know that the macaroni was boiled in milk and water, then drained and composed in layers in a casserole dish with butter and cheese. The cheeses were likely Parmigiano Reggiano and cheddar, both mentioned in various accounts of the times.
Eventually macaroni and cheese became a culinary all-American dish. As time went by and the first wave of Italian immigrants arrived in the last quarter of the 19th century, the industrialization of macaroni products took hold and macaroni, and cheese became an effortless dish to make thanks to the boxed version introduced by the Kraft company in 1937. In honor of the 250th, enjoy macaroni pie alla Thomas Jefferson.
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