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APPLES AND RICE (another way)
Simmer a cupful of rice in a quart of milk until the rice is tender and the milk absorbed. Add a heaped-up table-spoonful of sugar, and half a dozen drops of essence of almonds. Beat well for a few minutes, then place in the centre of a large dish a round jar, and pour the rice round it. Pare, core, and cut six or eight large apples into slices half an inch thick. Fry them in boiling oil or butter until they are cooked through, but do not allow them to break; stick them into the rice, and ornament it prettily with coloured jam, pink sugar, red jelly, or in any way that the fancy may suggest. Before serving, lift the jar from the centre of the dish, and fill the hole with a good custard (see CUSTARD). This may be eaten either hot or cold. Time to boil the rice, forty minutes. Sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, 2s.
A moulded rice pudding built around an improvised centre well, finished with custard poured in at the table. The technique is simple; the only real skill is in the apples, which must cook through without collapsing.
- The jar is the mouldA straight-sided jar or tin stood in the middle of the serving dish while the hot rice is packed around it. The recipe has you lift it out just before serving and fill the cavity with custard; the rice will hold its shape more reliably if it has been allowed to firm up first, though the dish is offered hot or cold.
- Rice and milkA cupful of rice to a quart of milk is roughly 200 g to a little over a litre (an imperial quart is about 1.14 l). Short-grain pudding rice is the better choice, as it releases more starch and helps the ring hold together. Stir often over low heat, as milk at this ratio catches easily.
- Forty minutes is rightThe stated time is realistic for short-grain rice absorbing that much milk over a gentle flame. If it thickens before the grains are tender, add a little more milk rather than raising the heat.
- Essence of almondsAlmond extract will do; six drops is enough, and more turns the dish medicinal. Victorian essence was often derived from bitter almonds and could carry traces of hydrocyanic acid; commercial extract today is prepared so that this is not a concern.
- Frying the applesHalf-inch slices of a firm cooking apple, fried in butter or a neutral oil hot enough to colour them immediately. Do not crowd the pan and turn each slice once; a slice that steams will break when you push it into the rice.
- The custard'Fill the hole with a good custard' implies a pouring custard rather than a set one: egg yolks, milk or cream and sugar cooked until it coats the spoon. Make it while the rice cools and keep it warm, or make it in advance and serve the whole thing cold.
- Decoration"Pink sugar" would have been sugar tinted red, most likely with cochineal, the standard colouring of the period. Warmed and sieved apricot or redcurrant jam does the same job now and adds gloss to the fried apple.
- Yield and costSix servings, as stated. The two shillings is a late-Victorian price and has no useful modern equivalent; it is quoted here as the book's own guide to whether a dish was economical.
Cassell's gives this as a variant, and the pattern is a familiar one in nineteenth-century English cookery: boiled rice used architecturally, packed into a border or ring and filled with fruit, custard or a compote. Moulded and bordered rice dishes were well established in French cookery of the period, and in a domestic English kitchen without a proper border mould a jar in the middle of the dish achieved a similar effect for nothing. Rice was by this date firmly a pudding ingredient in British households, milk-simmered and sweetened; the fried apple slices stuck upright into the ring reflect the period's appetite for dishes that were presented rather than merely served, with the custard poured in at the last moment as a small piece of theatre.