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Gravy, Rice
Boil a table-spoonful of washed rice for two hours in half a pint of plain stock, made from poultry bones or boiled beef, well reduced. Pass through a sieve. Now take some gravy from a joint, or good meat tea, or Bovril, and use it to dilute the rice to the consistency of thin cream. Season to taste, and serve hot with toast or biscuits. If wanted quickly, ground rice or rice flour may be used, when only about half an hour's boiling will be required.
Less a gravy than a thin rice-thickened broth of the invalid-cookery school, this needs almost no equipment but does need attention to consistency and salt.
- Half a pintCassell's works in imperial measure, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, or a scant 1 1/4 US cups. The rice absorbs and the stock reduces, so expect to top up with hot water or stock during the two hours.
- Meat tea and Bovril"Meat tea" here appears to mean a meat essence of the beef tea type: lean beef steeped in water and strained, with no thickening. Bovril is the bottled beef extract, still sold; a teaspoon dissolved in hot water stands in for the same thing, though it is far saltier than homemade beef tea, so season at the very end.
- Well reduced stockThe instruction matters more than it looks. Two hours of gentle simmering on a thin stock gives a watery result; start with stock that has already been reduced and is properly gelatinous, or the finished puree will taste of nothing but rice.
- Keep it below a boilA tablespoon of rice in 10 fl oz will catch and scorch on the base long before two hours are up. Use a heavy pan over the lowest heat, or a heatproof bowl set over simmering water, and stir occasionally.
- Passing through a sieveA fine sieve and the back of a ladle is the period method and gives the smoothest texture. A blender is quicker but whips air into it; if you use one, let it settle before serving.
- Ground rice shortcutGround rice and rice flour are the same thing for this purpose. Whisk it into the cold or barely warm stock before heating or it will lump, and reckon on 20 to 30 minutes to cook out the raw starch taste.
- ConsistencyThin cream is the target and it thickens noticeably as it cools, so finish it slightly looser than you want and serve straight away.
- YieldAs written this makes one invalid's portion, roughly a large cupful. Scale up proportionally; the rice-to-stock ratio is about one tablespoon per 10 fl oz.
This belongs to the substantial body of nineteenth-century invalid cookery, the recipes written for the sickroom rather than the dining table, which often occupy their own chapters in Victorian household manuals. The logic of the age held that a patient could not digest solid meat but could be sustained on its "essence", hence beef tea, meat teas and extracts, thickened here with rice into something that could be spooned. Bovril's appearance dates the entry: the beef extract was marketed under that name from the 1880s, and it turns up here in a general dictionary of cookery alongside the older home-simmered preparations. The nutritional theory was largely wrong, as beef tea carries very little protein, but the dishes survived because they were warm, salty and easy to swallow.