Boil 1 cup of rice; add 3 chopped shallots, 1 teaspoonful of soy and salt to taste. Place on a platter, cover with chopped hard-boiled eggs, sprinkle with salt, paprica and chopped parsley. Garnish with some thin slices of smoked salmon.
April 15 — No. 15
Japanese
A short composed rice dish from a daily-menu book, written in the telegraphic style these calendars used. The instructions assume you already know how to boil rice, so the useful work is in the proportions and the assembly.
- Rice quantity and methodOne cup of raw rice yields about three cups cooked and serves three to four as a light dish. The book gives no water ratio or timing; treat it as plain boiled long-grain or short-grain rice, drained and still hot.
- ShallotsSome American books of this period used "shallot" loosely for scallions or green onions, so it is not certain which is meant here. Three small true shallots raw over rice is aggressive; three scallions, green and white, is gentler.
- SoyOne teaspoon of soy sauce for a cup of rice is a seasoning accent, not a sauce. Note that the recipe also calls for salt twice on top of it, which by modern palates is one salting too many. Season the rice with soy first, then taste before adding any.
- PapricaA variant spelling of paprika. In American cookbooks of this general era the paprika sold was usually sweet rather than hot, and was often used as much for color as for flavor.
- Hard-boiled eggsChopped whole eggs are intended, whites and yolks together. Cook them so the yolks are just set rather than chalky, since they are the main body of the topping.
- Smoked salmonThe thin slices suggest cold-smoked salmon, laid around the edge as garnish. It is not cooked at any point in the recipe, so buy it ready to eat and keep it refrigerated until serving.
- Serving temperatureWarm rice under cold eggs and cold salmon. Assemble at the last moment and take it to the table immediately, or the salmon warms and slackens.
Books like this one worked through the calendar with one dish a day, each labeled with a nation, and the label was often more an atmosphere than an ethnography. This dish is "Japanese" chiefly because it uses soy, still a novelty in most American kitchens around the turn of the century. The actual construction, boiled rice on a platter under chopped hard-boiled egg, parsley and paprika, with smoked salmon around the rim, belongs firmly to the Anglo-American garnished-platter tradition, and is close kin to kedgeree, the Anglo-Indian rice-and-fish breakfast dish that was popular in the same period. What the entry really records is the moment when soy was exotic enough to name a country after, but was still being handled with entirely Western technique.