DREAMSTIME.COM/MARY EVANS
Mac ‘n’ cheese is an American classic. It’s the ultimate comfort food: cheesy, gooey, warming. One persistent myth maintains that Thomas Jefferson brought James Hemings, an enslaved man, to France to train as a chef; he then brought back a pasta machine and a recipe for macaroni and cheese to serve to the American elite.
In fact, it wasn’t until the Great Depression of the 1930s that macaroni cheese became widespread in American culture. Canadian-American businessman James Lewis Kraft had pioneered the production of processed cheese during the First World War. Then Grant Leslie, a salesman from St Louis, Missouri, combined dried processed cheese with industrially dried pasta. And in 1937, Kraft introduced the Kraft Dinner – a mass-produced macaroni and cheese mix sold at a very low price that fed millions when food was hard to come by.