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Rice Souffle
4 tablespoons ground rice stirred to smooth paste with 1/2 tablespoon Crisco and 6 tablespoons milk. Add remainder of a pint of milk, and put all into a saucepan, and stir till it thickens. Add beaten yolks 4 eggs and 2 tablespoons sugar well stirred, also add the well whisked whites of 4 eggs. Mix all thoroughly, place in a Criscoed souffle dish, and bake for 1/2 hour. Serve instantly.
A plain sweet soufflé thickened with rice flour rather than wheat flour, from a Crisco-sponsored menu book. The original gives no oven temperature, so that is the first gap to fill.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated. Bake at 350F for the specified half hour; a sweet soufflé of this size sets in about 30–35 minutes and will still have a slightly creamy centre.
- Ground riceNot cracked or cooked rice, but rice milled to a meal. It is usually a slightly coarser grind than modern rice flour, though fine white rice flour is the nearest substitute; it thickens like cornstarch but gives a faintly grainy body.
- The pint of milkOne US pint is 2 cups, or 32 tablespoons. The 6 tablespoons used for the paste count toward it, so add about 26 tablespoons (a generous 1 1/2 cups, closer to 1 2/3) more, not a further full pint.
- CriscoThe book was published to promote it. Half a tablespoon of any neutral solid fat or butter does the same job, and butter improves the flavour; "a Criscoed soufflé dish" simply means greased.
- Cool the base before the yolksThe rice mixture thickens near boiling. Let it stand a few minutes off the heat before beating in the yolks, or they will scramble in streaks.
- Folding, not mixing"Mix all thoroughly" is misleading. Fold the whisked whites in in two or three additions with a spatula, stopping while a few streaks remain; stirring them through collapses the foam that does all the lifting.
- Dish sizeUse a 1 1/2-quart soufflé dish, filled no more than three-quarters. Do not open the oven during the first 20 minutes.
- Serve instantlyMeant literally. A soufflé risen on egg white alone begins to sink within two or three minutes out of the oven, so have the table waiting rather than the dish.
- YieldFour servings as a light dessert. It is only lightly sweetened; a fruit sauce or a spoonful of jam suits it.
This comes from one of the recipe collections issued in the 1910s and 1920s to establish Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, as an all-purpose substitute for butter and lard — hence the brand appearing twice in five lines, including as a verb. The dish itself is older and thoroughly English: ground rice was a standard nursery and invalid thickener through the nineteenth century, cheaper than arrowroot and, by the digestive lore of the period, thought gentler than wheat flour, and rice soufflés and rice moulds appear in household manuals well before Crisco existed.