Rice Au Gratin
1 tablespoon salt. 1½ lb. grated cheese.
Cayenne. 1/2 tablespoons butter.
Milk.
Buttered cracker crumbs.
PROCESS: When steaming or boiling the rice, allow one tablespoon of salt for seasoning. Butter a baking dish and cover with a layer of rice, dot over with some of the butter. Sprinkle with a thin layer of cheese and a slight sprinkle cayenne; repeat alternate layers until rice and cheese are used. Pour on milk to half the depth of baking dish, cover with buttered cracker crumbs and bake in oven until cheese melts and crumbs are brown.
The ingredient list in the original is incomplete — the rice itself is never quantified, and the cheese figure is out of proportion to anything else on the page. Treat this as a method rather than a formula.
- The missing riceNo quantity is given. For a 2-quart baking dish, about 1½ cups raw long-grain rice (roughly 4½ cups cooked) fills it in three or four layers with cheese between.
- 1½ lb of cheese is almost certainly wrongThat much grated cheese against a normal dish of rice gives a greasy, broken casserole. Half a pound of a firm dry cheese — aged cheddar or a similar plain hard cheese — is the working amount, more if you like it rich. The original says only 'grated cheese' and names no variety.
- "1/2 tablespoons butter"Another garbled figure. Two to three tablespoons total, dotted across the layers, is enough to keep the rice from packing.
- Salt the rice, not the dishA full tablespoon of salt is for cooking the rice; if you boil it, most is poured off with the water. Do not add it to the assembled layers; the cheese and crackers bring their own.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. 375F for 25 to 30 minutes browns the crumbs and sets the milk without curdling the cheese into oil.
- Milk to half the depthPour it in at the side rather than over the crumbs, and use whole milk. It should come halfway up the rice, not float it — the rice absorbs the rest as it bakes.
- Buttered cracker crumbsCrush plain soda crackers and toss with melted butter, about a tablespoon of butter to a cup of crumbs. Dry crumbs scorch before they brown.
- YieldA 2-quart dish made this way serves six as a side or four as a supper dish.
Rice au gratin belongs to the large family of American "scalloped" dishes — alternating layers of a starch and a savory element, moistened with milk and finished with buttered crumbs. The French term au gratin refers strictly to the browned crust, not to cheese, though American cookbooks of this general period often used the two interchangeably. Rice was cheap and shipped well, and layered baked rice dishes of this kind appear widely alongside potato and macaroni versions. The quantities here are vague, and the rice is left unmeasured altogether.