Cook rice until tender; then reheat in a well-seasoned chicken stock. Put on a platter; sprinkle with chopped chicken liver, scrambled eggs and grated cheese and serve at once.
August 11 — No. 11
Norwegian
This is shorthand of the kind common in daily-calendar cookbooks: the compiler assumed the cook knew how to handle each component. Two of the three garnishes need work the text does not spell out.
- Cook the liversThe instruction to "sprinkle with chopped chicken liver" almost certainly assumes livers already cooked; the recipe never says to cook them. Saute them in butter until firm and no longer pink at the centre (165F), then chop. Raw or barely warmed poultry liver is a recognised source of Campylobacter.
- The hingeEverything must be hot and assembled at the last minute. Rice reheated in stock cools fast on an open platter, and scrambled eggs left standing weep. Have the eggs going while the rice absorbs the stock.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For four people, 1 1/2 cups raw long-grain rice, about 1 1/2 cups well-flavoured chicken stock for the reheating, 3 eggs, 2 chicken livers and 1/2 cup grated cheese are in proportion.
- "Reheat in stock"This is not a pilaf. The rice is already tender, so add hot stock a little at a time over moderate heat and let it be absorbed — three or four minutes. More stock than the rice can take up leaves a soupy platter.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in a recipe of this kind most likely points to a dry grating cheese — Parmesan or a hard aged Gouda-type — though the text does not specify. Norwegian Jarlsberg is a mid-twentieth-century cheese and is unlikely to have been meant here, though it melts pleasantly if you want it.
- Seasoning"Well-seasoned" carried more weight when stock was made at home from a carcass. Commercial stock is already salty, so salt the eggs and livers rather than the rice, and taste before adding more.
- ServingA light supper or luncheon dish for four, or a side for a plain roast bird. It does not reheat well once the eggs are on it.
The attributions in books of this kind were often looser than they look — "Norwegian" here need signal no more than a rough association with the name. What the dish does reflect accurately is the Scandinavian fondness for rice, which arrived as an imported luxury and stayed: rice porridge (risgrot) became the festival food of Norwegian Christmas, and rice was long treated as something special enough to dress up. Savoury rice with chopped liver, egg and cheese also belongs to a broader turn-of-the-century habit of building a whole course out of leftovers and a good stock, which is how a platter like this earned its place in an everyday household calendar.</p>