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Rice, American Mode of Cooking
Take a nice clean stewpan, with a closely-fitting lid. Have ready a clean piece of white cloth, large enough to cover over the top of the stewpan, and hang down inside nearly to, but not in contact with, the bottom, and thus form a sort of sack, into which put the rice. Pour over it two cupfuls of water, and then put on the lid of the stewpan so as to hold up the cloth inside and fit tight all round. Put the stewpan on the fire, and the steam generated by the water will cook the rice to perfection. Add more water, but only just enough to keep up the steam.
An improvised steamer, built from a cloth sling suspended inside a lidded pan. The method works, but the original leaves out the two things a cook needs most: how much rice, and how long.
- QuantityNo rice measure is given. The two cupfuls are poured over the rice in the cloth and drain through to the bottom of the pan, where they generate steam rather than being absorbed; nothing in the text says they must go in hot, since the pan is put on the fire afterwards. Scale by the cloth: a cup or a cup and a half of raw long-grain rice sits comfortably in a sling of this kind.
- The clothUse unbleached muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth, rinsed in plain hot water first and never washed with scented detergent or fabric softener. A modern tea towel with a finish on it will pass that finish into the rice.
- The hingeThe cloth must hang clear of the water. If it touches the bottom it wicks, the rice boils in the pouch, and the result is the sodden mass the method exists to avoid. Tie or clamp the cloth under the lid so it stays suspended as the rice swells and gains weight.
- Heat"On the fire" here means a steady simmer, not a hard boil. On a modern hob, bring the water up on high, then hold it at medium-low so steam is continuous but the pan is not spitting.
- TimingThe original gives none. Long-grain white rice steamed this way takes roughly 25 to 30 minutes, a little longer than the absorption method because the grains are heated only by vapour. Brown rice will need closer to 45 minutes and more topping-up.
- Topping up the water"Only just enough to keep up the steam" is the whole discipline. Add boiling water, not cold, or the steam stops and the cooking stalls. A dry pan under a cloth sling scorches quickly and the smell will carry into the rice.
- RinsingRinse the rice until the water runs clear before it goes in the cloth. Steaming does not wash away surface starch the way a big pot of boiling water does, so unrinsed grains will cling.
- Modern equivalentA metal steamer basket lined with cheesecloth over an inch of simmering water gives much the same result and is easier to manage. The finished rice should be dry, hot and separate; the original says nothing about seasoning or serving.
Nineteenth-century English cookery books commonly boiled rice in a large quantity of water and drained it, so a drier, grain-by-grain result was often labelled foreign: "American mode," or elsewhere "Indian fashion." Carolina long-grain was the American crop of the period, though the recipe itself tells us nothing about how widespread this particular cloth-sling method was in American households. Cloth had long been used in British cookery for boiling puddings and dumplings, so the material would have been familiar to an English cook -- though this entry still troubles to explain in detail how to rig it.