Rice Soup
To half a teacup of rice put one quart of water and boil slowly one hour. To this add half an onion, two stalks of celery and two or three cloves; boil another hour, adding three gills of cream, a dessertspoonful of butter rolled in a little flour, with pepper and salt. When it comes to a boil it is ready for the table. -Mrs. Robert Wayne.
A plain white soup of the sort that opened a formal dinner: rice cooked to collapse, aromatics, cream and a butter-and-flour thickening. The measures are all pre-standard, and the two hours of boiling are doing something specific.
- Teacup, gill, dessertspoonA teacup in this period is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz, though the term was never fixed, so half a teacup is roughly 1/3 cup of rice. A gill is half a cup, making three gills 1 1/2 cups of cream. A dessertspoonful is 2 teaspoons.
- The rice is the thickenerTwo hours of slow boiling is not an error. The grains are meant to burst and dissolve so the soup bodies up on its own; long-grain rice will do this, but short or medium grain breaks down faster and gives a smoother result.
- Keep the liquid upA quart simmered two hours uncovered will reduce by a third or more. Cover partially and add hot water as needed, or the soup will be paste rather than soup by the time the cream goes in.
- Fish out the clovesTwo or three whole cloves in a quart is assertive after two hours. Push them into the onion half so they can be lifted out cleanly, and taste before deciding whether the second hour needs all of them.
- Cream at the end, gentlyBringing 1 1/2 cups of cream to a rolling boil in a starchy pot risks scorching on the bottom and a broken, grainy texture. Heavy cream tolerates it better than light; warm it first, stir constantly, and take the pot off as soon as it shivers.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié: 2 teaspoons of soft butter worked into a little flour, dropped in and whisked until it disperses. Given the dissolved rice already present, it adds gloss more than thickness.
- Straining is optional but period-correctStraining is optional -- Many period white soups were pressed through a sieve before the cream went in, leaving the onion and celery flavour without the fibre. The recipe as written serves it unsieved.
- YieldAbout a quart after reduction and cream, enough for four small first-course servings.
White soups thickened with rice, barley or almonds were a common opening of a nineteenth-century dinner, pale and mild before the fish and roast arrived. Rice was cheap and shelf-stable in American pantries by this period, and it gave a cook body without the expense of a long-simmered stock: this soup is built on water, not broth, which tells you it was meant to be economical. The attribution to Mrs. Robert Wayne is typical of turn-of-the-century community and household compilations, which gathered contributions under members' married names and printed them more or less as written, ambiguous teacups and all.