Mrs. Morss’ Sauce for Tagliarini
Tagliarini! It’s a fun word to say. I have never heard of it and had to look it up. There are many versions of tagliarini. This recipe is a sauce with layers of “paste” which in my travels around old recipes is pasta. So take layers of the sauce and alternate layers of pasta and sauce together on a platter to serve.
I know that cooking a tomato sauce for a long time produces an extremely tasty sauce that you won’t even come close to a jar of pasta sauce. This would be a great candidate for a pressure cooker to shorten the cooking time. A recipe like this requiring two hours of cooking time can be made in under 30 minutes with a pressure cooker.
If you are in the market for a pressure cooker, I highly recommend the Ninja FD401 Foodi 8-qt. 9-in-1 Deluxe XL Cooker & Air Fryer-Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker, 8-Quart. I have a Ninja Foodie and it so great! It is a pressure cooker, air crisp, sear/sauté, bake, broil, steam, slow cook, dehydrate, and yogurt.
Recipe
Put two spoonfuls of olive oil into a skillet; into this put one-half pound of round steak, scored or cut into squares. When meat is well browned, add one-half of a large onion, one-half clove of garlic, one tablespoon mixture, chopped parsley and sweet marjoram, one cupful tomato or one-third cup tomato paste, one handful dried mushrooms which have been soaked overnight. Let boil slowly about two hours. Take a large platter and in it place a layer of paste, then sauce, then grated cheese, and so on until material is all used, having grated cheese as top layer.
Mrs. Morss, Salinas, Cal – San Francisco Chronicle – 21 Dec 1919

Italian Sauce for Tagliarini by Mrs. Morss
An Italian pasta sauce from 1919
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 pound round steak scored or cut into squares
- 1/2 large onion
- 1/2 clove garlic
- t tsp parsley
- 1 1/2 tsp sweet marjoram
- 1/3 cup tomato paste
- 1 cup dried mushrooms soaked overnight