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Casserole, Sweet
Prepare the rice as before, using milk instead of water, and butter instead of bacon or other fat. The flavouring may consist of lemon, vanilla, or almond, according to taste. When the pudding is browned, scoop the rice from the middle, leaving, as before, a firm wall all around, and fill the hollow with jam, or a compote of any fruit. The latter is, we think, much to be preferred. Sift a little pounded sugar over the whole before serving. Time to boil the rice, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the fruit. Sufficient for a good and pretty dish.
This is the sweet version of the preceding savoury casserole, and it assumes you have read that one: rice is cooked until very soft, packed into a mould or dish, browned, then hollowed out and filled. The word here means the rice case itself, not a baked stew.
- What a "casserole" is hereIn this book a casserole is a shaped wall of stiff rice, browned on the outside and scooped hollow to hold a filling. Nothing is baked in a covered dish here, though the word was also used at this date for the vessel.
- The rice matters mostUse a short-grain pudding rice. It has to cook down to a paste stiff enough to stand as a wall when moulded, which long-grain rice does far less well.
- Three-quarters of an hour in milkThe book gives this as boiling time. Milk scorches, so keep it at a bare simmer over low heat in a heavy pan, stirring often, or set the covered pan in a low oven. Something in the region of 1 cup rice to 4 cups milk should give the right consistency.
- BrowningThe book does not say how. Brushing the moulded rice with melted butter and giving it 20-30 minutes in a moderate oven (about 350F), or a few minutes under a hot grill, will do it. It should colour, not dry out.
- Almond flavouringRead this as almond extract or a spoonful of ground sweet almonds. Nineteenth-century kitchens sometimes used bitter almonds or ratafia for this note; bitter almonds are not sold for eating and should not be substituted.
- Pounded sugarSugar crushed fine with a pestle, the equivalent of caster or superfine sugar. Icing sugar sifted over the top does the same job.
- The fillingThe author's preference for a fruit compote over jam is stated in the recipe itself: jam against sweetened rice is cloying, and a lightly sugared stewed fruit gives acidity. Fill shortly before serving so the browned wall does not soften.
- Cost and yieldSixpence dates the recipe rather than helping you shop. The book gives no quantities and no serving count, only that it makes "a good and pretty dish".
Cassell's is translating a French idea into English domestic terms. In nineteenth-century professional cookery a casserole au riz was a case built of stiffly cooked rice, moulded, browned and filled with a ragout or salpicon; the sweet version, filled with compote instead, was the dessert counterpart on the same plan, and the two appear side by side in this book, seemingly on that logic. Rice was cheap, filling and by the 1870s widely imported, which may well be part of why sixpence buys the whole structure, and the pattern of a starch bordure enclosing something richer runs right through the period's table cookery. The word's later drift, from the vessel and the rice case to the baked dish of mixed food it names today, is the reason this recipe reads oddly now.