Savory Rice
Cook one cup well-washed rice in three quarts of boiling water until partially softened. Drain; add to rice two cups of well-seasoned White Stock; turn into double boiler and steam until rice is soft and stock absorbed. Stir in one-fourth cup butter, one tablespoon finely chopped chives or parsley. Mix well with a fork and turn into hot serving dish. Sprinkle with pepper.
A two-stage rice method — parboil in abundant water, then finish in stock — that gives separate grains without the risk of a scorched pan. Nothing here needs correcting, only clarifying.
- The hinge: parboil only partially"Partially softened" means roughly 5–7 minutes for long-grain white rice, when a grain still has a firm opaque core. Take it further and the double-boiler stage turns the dish to porridge.
- Washing the riceRice in 1913 was often coated with talc or glucose as a polish, so washing was mandatory. Modern rice needs only a rinse until the water runs clear, which still removes loose surface starch and keeps the grains distinct.
- White StockA foundation stock of the period: veal and/or chicken bones simmered with aromatics, unbrowned and unthickened. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; "well-seasoned" means salted to taste before it goes near the rice, since nothing is added later but pepper.
- Double boiler timingOver simmering water, covered, expect 20–30 minutes for the two cups of stock to be absorbed. It is slow because it is gentle — the point is that the rice cannot catch. A heavy covered saucepan on the lowest burner does the same job in less time if you watch it.
- Butter quantityOne-fourth cup is 4 tablespoons (2 oz) into a single cup of raw rice — generous by current habit, and correct for the period. Half that still gives gloss if you want it lighter.
- Chives or parsleyStir them in off the heat with the butter so they stay green. A fork, not a spoon, as the recipe says: it separates the grains rather than mashing them.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives about three cups cooked — four modest side servings alongside a roast.
52 Sunday Dinners belongs to the era when American cookbooks were teaching households a French-derived kitchen vocabulary, and this rice is a plain example: a mother stock (White Stock) made once and drawn on through the week, here carrying the flavor of a side dish that would otherwise be blank. The parboil-then-steam method appears often in English and American books of the period, in part because rice was said to be sold polished with talc and washing was thought essential, and in part because it produced the dry, separate grains that Victorian and Edwardian cooks prized over anything sticky.