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Rice and Egg Stew
Wash a quarter of a pound of rice, and put it on to boil in cold milk and weak stock, a pint of each. Cook until the liquid is nearly dried up, then add a seasoning of salt and pepper, an ounce of butter, and a grate of nutmeg. Finish the cooking, take the pan from the fire, and beat in two raw eggs. The rice will take about an hour and a half to cook, and should resemble rice pudding in consistency. If liked, an onion can be cooked and chopped, and added before serving. By thinning with some stock an excellent soup is obtained. Probable cost, 9d.
A plain nursery-and-invalid dish of the type Cassell's kept in its principles section: rice cooked soft in milk and stock, enriched with egg off the heat. Two things need adjusting — the cooking time and the way the eggs go in.
- The hinge: the eggsBeat the eggs in only after the pan is off the fire, and beat fast, so the residual heat thickens them rather than scrambling them. If you want them properly set, return the pan to the lowest heat and stir for a minute or two until the mixture thickens visibly; it must not simmer again.
- An hour and a half is too longAn hour and a half is longer than modern rice needs -- that timing suits a very slow, gentle simmer until the liquid is absorbed. Modern long-grain or pudding rice will usually be soft in 25-40 minutes in this amount of liquid. Judge by texture -- loose rice pudding, still slack enough to fall from the spoon -- not by the clock.
- Imperial pintsA pint here is 20 fl oz, so a pint each of milk and stock is about 2 1/2 cups of each, 5 cups in all, to 4 oz (a generous 1/2 cup) of rice. That is a lot of liquid, which is why the rice can be cooked to complete softness without catching.
- Weak stockMeans a light, second-boiling stock or one thinned with water — the point is background savour, not a strong meat flavour fighting the milk. Diluted low-sodium chicken stock does the job.
- Butter and seasoningAn ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. Season at the stage indicated rather than earlier; the liquid reduces considerably and salt added at the start concentrates.
- Nutmeg"A grate" is a light dusting from a whole nutmeg, perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon. Ground nutmeg from a jar is flatter and easily overdone.
- The onionCook it separately until soft — boiled or gently sweated in butter — then chop and fold in at the end, so it does not colour the milk or go stringy in the rice.
- Yield and the soup versionEnough for three or four as a light supper dish. Thinned with more stock it becomes a soup; add the stock hot and after the eggs are in, off the heat, or the egg will curdle.
This is invalid cookery as much as it is family cookery. Victorian household manuals devoted whole chapters to feeding the sick and the convalescent, and rice slowly softened in milk was a standard vehicle: bland, filling, cheap, and easy to swallow. The addition of stock and a beaten egg is a common period way of turning such a dish from starch into something considered nourishing -- egg was regarded as concentrated strength, and it was stirred in raw off the fire so that it thickened rather than scrambled. The note of probable cost, 9d, appears throughout Cassell's alongside its other standard headings, and ninepence marks this out as an economical supper rather than a dinner course. The flexibility at the end -- chopped onion for savour, extra stock to make soup -- shows one preparation stretched into several.