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RICE (a la Benne Femme)
Wash six ounces of rice, throw it into plenty of fast-boiling water, and let it boil quickly for five minutes, then drain, and cool it. Cut four qunces of streaky bacon into dice, and fry these in a little butter until the colour begins to turn. Throw in the rice, dredge pepper lightly over it, and pour upon it a pint and a half of good broth. Let it boil till tender, stirring occasionally to prevent it burning. Have ready half a pint of hot tomato sauce. Pour out the rice, mix it thoroughly with the sauce, and pile the mixture lightly on a dish in the form of a pyramid. Place fried sausages round the rice, and serve very hot. Time to boil the rice, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d., exclusive of the sausages. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A pilaf-style dish built on bacon, broth and tomato sauce, from an era when rice was boiled far longer and far wetter than we do now. The measurements are imperial, so the liquid quantity is larger than it looks.
- Imperial pintsA pint and a half here is 30 imperial fl oz, roughly 41/2 US cups; the half pint of tomato sauce is 10 imperial fl oz, about 11/4 US cups. Against 6 oz (about 1 cup) of rice that is a great deal of liquid, appropriate to the long cooking below but not to modern rice.
- The half-hour boilThirty minutes reflects the parboil-and-drain start and the rice of the period. Modern long-grain rice is tender in 15-18 minutes and will collapse if held at a boil for half an hour. Judge by the grain, not the clock.
- Why the rice is boiled twiceThe five-minute blanch and cooling washes off surface starch so the grains stay separate once they hit the fat. Skip it and the finished dish is closer to risotto than pilaf.
- Streaky baconThis is the British cut taken from the belly, the same muscle as American bacon. Four ounces of a thick-cut, lightly smoked bacon is the right substitute; avoid heavily sugared varieties, which will catch in the pan.
- Stirring and burningThe warning is real. With bacon fat in the pot and a long simmer, the base scorches easily. Keep the heat low once the broth is in, and use a heavy pan.
- Tomato sauceNot ketchup and not a pasta sauce. This is likely a smooth cooked sauce of tomatoes with stock and seasoning, closer to a thin passata reduced with broth. The recipe has it ready and hot, and mixes it into the cooked rice rather than simmering it in.
- SaltNone is specified; only pepper. The bacon, the broth and the sauce will each bring their own. Taste before adding any.
- Yield and costFive or six portions as a supper dish, as the recipe states. The 1s. 6d. has no modern equivalent worth calculating; it appears because Cassell's costed most of its recipes for household budgeting.
The title appears to be a printer's slip for à la bonne femme — "in the good wife's manner" — a French kitchen term for homely, unfussy treatments. (The original page also carries "qunces" for ounces, a reminder that these dictionaries were set at speed.) Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was a large compendium that priced most of its recipes, which suggests it was aimed at the mistress of a modest household rather than a professional kitchen. Rice appears throughout the book as an economical bulk food, and dishes like this one — a little cured pork, a good deal of grain, sausages round the edge to make it look like a dinner — are the sort of stretching the format was built to teach.