MACKEREL AND SEA FISH. 439 
fork, because the contact of steel imparts a bad taste, particularly 
if with a seasoning of tomatoes. For persons unaccustomed to 
eat their long Macaroni after the clever fashion of the Neapolitans, 
by twisting it round and round the fork, the advice not to cut it 
with a steel knife is especially needful. 
Dressed Macaroni is a mixture of flour, cheese, and butter; and 
it therefore bears (as some say) the Italian name Macrhetone, a 
fool, or blockhead. This is after the same fashion of naming a 
clown, when taken as typical of his country, by a popular dish 
therein, such as English Jack Pudding, German Hanswiurst, or 
Jack Sausage, or French Jean Farine, Jack Flour. The Macaroni 
of smaller size is called Vermicelli (little worms). An admixture 
of such a cereal food as Macaroni with cheese makes the latter 
more easy to be digested. Both Macaroni, and Vermicelli, are 
prepared in the greatest perfection at Naples, where they form 
a principal item in the food of the population. Spaghetti is an 
Italian Macaroni, made into cords smaller than that of Naples, 
and larger than Vermicelli. 
To make a Macaroni and marmalade pudding, take a quarter 
of a pound of Macaroni, three eggs, three ounces of sugar, a very 
little spice of cinnamon, or nutmeg, with some orange or apricot 
marmalade. Boil the Macaroni till tender, drain away the water, 
pour over it a little milk, and allow it to cool. When cold, mix 
into it the eggs, sugar, and a tiny dust of the spice. Put a layer 
of the mixture in a pie dish, then a layer of the marmalade, and 
then the remainder of the Macaroni: and bake in the oven for 
fifteen or twenty minutes. The Macaroni should be gently 
boiled for one hour. Macaroni, and other sorts of Italian paste, 
contain only about 9 per cent of nitrogenous substances ; if a 
healthy, well-fed man were to live exclusively on Macaroni, he 
would lose weight, because having to subsidize proteids from his 
own resources ; but an addition to the Macaroni of eggs, or meat, 
would prevent this deficiency. 
MACKEREL AND SEA FISH. 
THE commercial sizes of Mackerel are “large, seconds,” 
“ tinkers,” and “ blinks,” according as they are of four, three, 
two, and one, years of growth. Robert Lovell told (1661) 
“Mackerel are naught for those that are troubled with the 
epilepsy : they are not to be used except by young strong men.’ 
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