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Curry, to Boil Rice For
Patna rice is the correct rice to use for curries, but it cannot always be obtained. The thing to be attended to is to have each grain of rice distinct and unbroken, and at the same time quite tender. This can be attained quite as easily with Carolina as with Patna rice, but the former will require boiling a few minutes longer than the latter. Wash the rice in several waters, and, after removing every discoloured and unhusked grain, boil it in plenty of cold water. This is the secret of having the rice whole. The water will keep the grains separate. Leave the saucepan uncovered. Bring the water slowly to a boil. Shake the pan occasionally to prevent burning, but do not stir the rice at all. When it has simmered gently for twenty or twenty-five minutes it will most likely be tender. Patna rice will not require so long. Drain it in a colander, and let it dry gently before the fire. Serve it round the curry. Probable cost, 4d. per pound. Sufficient, half a pound of rice for a moderate-sized dish of curry.
A sound method for separate, unbroken grains, but written for unmilled, older rice that behaved very differently from what is on the shelf today. The timing is the one thing to ignore.
- The timing is the hingeTwenty to twenty-five minutes will reduce modern long-grain rice to mush. Present-day milled rice cooks through in 10-12 minutes in abundant boiling water; start testing a grain at eight minutes.
- Patna and CarolinaPatna is a long-grain rice from Bihar, and the rice this book names as correct for curries; any long-grain or basmati stands in for it. Carolina rice, once a major American export to Britain, was the other rice commonly on sale here, and the recipe notes it wants a few minutes longer than Patna. It is little seen under that name today.
- Cold water startThe instruction to begin in cold water may have suited the rice then available; the recipe credits it with keeping the grains whole. With today's rice it mainly adds several minutes of swelling before the boil. Dropping washed rice into plenty of boiling water instead, keeping the pan uncovered as directed, is the safer course.
- Washing still mattersRinsing in several changes of water until it runs clear removes loose surface starch and helps keep the grains distinct, though the recipe itself credits the plentiful water. The picking-over for unhusked and discoloured grains is rarely needed with packaged rice.
- SaltThe recipe gives none, perhaps on the assumption the curry carries the seasoning. A teaspoon of salt per two litres of cooking water improves the rice without competing with the sauce.
- Drying before the fireThis means driving off surface moisture, not further cooking. After draining, spread the rice in the hot empty pan off the heat for two or three minutes, or in a low oven at 300F, and fork it through once.
- Yield and servingHalf a pound is about one and a quarter cups of raw rice, roughly four servings. "Serve it round the curry" means banking the rice as a ring on the dish with the curry spooned into the centre, the standard Victorian presentation.
- CostFourpence a pound is a late-Victorian price and has no useful modern equivalent; it is quoted here only as a marker of how cheap rice was relative to the meat in the curry.
Cassell's was compiled at a point when curry had been thoroughly domesticated in British cooking, and a dictionary of this kind treats boiled rice as a technique worth its own entry rather than a footnote to a curry recipe. The two rices named tell their own story: Patna, from the Ganges plain, arrived through the East India trade and was the benchmark for a long, firm grain, while Carolina rice came from the tidal plantations of the American Southeast, an industry built on the labour of enslaved people with West African rice-growing knowledge. The recipe's own remark that Patna 'cannot always be obtained' suggests Carolina was the easier of the two to buy, which is why the entry bothers to explain how to make it behave like Patna. The insistence on plenty of water, no stirring and no lid is the pasta method applied to rice, and it long remained a standard British approach.