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RICE (a la Chicago)
Take half a pound of good rice, wash it, and pick out all the faulty grains. Put a gallon of water in a large saucepan, add a table-spoonful of salt, and a large onion previously scaled; then bring the water to boiling point. Put the rice in a thin cloth, in the form of a bag, place it in the saucepan over the water, which it must not touch, and let the edges of the cloth hang outside; then put on the lid, which will hold the bag in position. Let the water boil fast till the rice is tender, then turn it into a clean saucepan, and add a tea-spoonful each of mixed mustard, grated horse-radish, chopped parsley, and lemon-juice. Chop the onion taken from the boiling water, and add it, along with a gill of brown stock thickened with a heaped tea-spoonful of arrowroot. Stir for a few minutes, pile on a hot dish, and send to table with beef or veal. Probable cost, 6d.
A steamed rice side dish dressed like a sauce — mustard, horseradish, lemon and thickened brown stock — meant to go beside a roast. The method is sound, but the vessel and a few of the terms need translating.
- The cloth bag is a steamerHalf a pound of rice tied loosely in muslin and suspended above boiling water is simply a steamer basket with extra steps. Use a lined steamer or sieve set over the pan; the point of the instruction is that the rice must never touch the water, so the grains stay separate rather than swelling into a mass.
- Leave room to swellIf you do use cloth, tie it slackly. Rice swells to two or three times its dry bulk, and a tight bag gives you a compressed lump at the centre that never cooks through. The recipe gives no time, only "till the rice is tender"; steaming will take appreciably longer than boiling, so allow well over half an hour and test.
- "Previously scaled"Almost certainly a misprint for scalded, or else simply peeled. The onion goes into the water, not the rice, and is there to flavour the steam; it is chopped and returned at the end.
- A gillFive fluid ounces in British measure — about two-thirds of a US cup. Brown stock means a dark meat stock; a good beef stock is the modern equivalent.
- Mixed mustardPrepared mustard made up from powder, i.e. English mustard paste, not a grainy or Dijon-style condiment. A teaspoonful is assertive against half a pound of rice, which is the intention.
- Arrowroot needs restraintA heaped teaspoon of arrowroot will thicken almost instantly on contact with heat, then thin again if held at a boil. Slake it in the cold stock, keep it off a hard boil while you stir, and serve promptly.
- Quantities and yieldHalf a pound is about a cup and a quarter of dry rice, serving four to six as an accompaniment. The gallon of water is only there to generate steam; any depth that will not boil dry over a long steaming will do.
- CostSixpence for the whole dish: rice, an onion, and a gill of brown stock.
Cassell's ran to a great many short entries, many of them distinguished by place-names, which is how a plain steamed rice with mustard and horseradish came by the title à la Chicago. The attribution is decorative rather than documented: Chicago's packing houses and the new American chilled-beef export trade were becoming familiar to British readers in this period, and a rice dish sent to table "with beef or veal" and sharpened with mustard and horseradish — the classic English accompaniments to roast beef — reads as a nod in that direction rather than evidence of any American original. As for the method, the Victorian preference for rice cooked dry and separate is often connected with Anglo-Indian cookery, and steaming in a cloth over the pan, rather than boiling in it, was one answer to that problem.