(263) The President and the Pasta

The President and the Pasta

Thomas Jefferson's Macaroni Machine. How America's third president brought a revolutionary kitchen tool home from Europe and changed the way the nation ate.

It's a curious detail in American history that the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase is also remembered, at least among food lovers, for his deep love of pasta. Thomas Jefferson, the influential Virginia statesman and third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809, truly enjoyed macaroni. For him, a simple love of food often turned into something more complex: a machine.

Jefferson's interest in macaroni began in Europe, as did many of his other interests. From 1784 to 1789, he was the American Minister to France, and those years in Paris changed him. He returned with a love for French wines, a passion for architecture inspired by ancient Rome, and a lasting appreciation for European food. Italy especially caught his attention. During a trip through northern Italy in 1787, Jefferson discovered macaroni in its homeland, where Italians had been making long, golden pasta tubes for centuries.

He liked the dish so much that he did what any inventive person of his time might do: he drew it. Among Jefferson's papers at the Library of Congress is a hand-drawn diagram, written in his neat handwriting, of a pasta-making machine. The sketch, probably made during or soon after his 1787 trip to Italy, shows a device with a cylindrical chamber, a plunger, and a perforated end.

This is similar to what we now call a pasta extruder. Jefferson carefully labeled the parts and wrote down the measurements, showing the same attention to detail he used in his other projects.

When Jefferson came back to America in 1789, he brought European tastes and ideas with him, including pasta. He is often credited with introducing macaroni to American dining, or at least making it popular among the upper class. As Secretary of State under George Washington and later as Vice President, Jefferson served macaroni at his dinner parties, surprising guests accustomed to simpler colonial fare.

The machine that Jefferson had carefully sketched was ordered and brought back from Europe. It's not certain whether he built his own version from his drawings or imported a finished machine, but it's clear that Jefferson became dedicated enough to pasta-making that he wanted to make it himself at home. At Monticello, his home in Virginia, he and his enslaved staff made macaroni using the extruder.

The macaroni machine worked on a simple but clever idea. Dough made from semolina flour and water was packed into the machine's barrel. A large screw or plunger was turned or pressed, pushing the dough through a brass or iron plate with holes of a certain shape and size. As the dough was forced through, it came out as long, even tubes of pasta.

These tubes were dried before cooking. Jefferson’s version, based on his sketch and historical records, made pasta tubes about as thick as a finger, more like what we now call rigatoni or large penne than the thin strands people often picture when they think of macaroni.

When Jefferson became President in 1801 and moved into the Executive Mansion, which was not yet called the White House, he brought his love of good food with him. He hired French chef Honoré Julien, and together they created some of the most refined and international meals in the young country. Macaroni was often served at Jefferson's table, offered to senators, diplomats, and guests who may never have tried it before.

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