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Rice Cream
Mix a large table-spoonful of ground rice very smoothly with a little milk, and add more milk to make the quantity up to half a pint. Pour the mixture into a saucepan, with the yellow part of half a lemon rubbed upon sugar, a quarter of an ounce of isinglass or gelatine, and a little piece of butter, and let it boil gently for five minutes, stirring all the time. Pour it out, and when it is almost cold stir into it a quarter of a pint of thick cream. Beat the preparation until it begins to stiffen, pour it into a mould, and put it in a cool place to set. Serve with fresh fruit, or with fruit-jelly reduced to syrup. Time, five minutes to boil the cream. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for a pint mould.
A Victorian moulded cream thickened with both rice flour and gelatine — light work, but the measurements assume imperial pints and a cook who knows how much sugar to add without being told.
- Imperial measuresCassell's half pint is 10 fl oz (1¼ cups) of milk, and the quarter pint of cream is 5 fl oz. A quarter ounce of gelatine is about 7 g — roughly 2½ teaspoons of powder, or three to four leaves of sheet gelatine depending on the brand's leaf weight.
- Ground riceThis is dry milled rice, not cooked rice, traditionally a slightly coarser grind than modern rice flour. Fine white rice flour from any supermarket works; whisk it into a little cold milk to a smooth slurry before adding the rest, or it will lump on heating.
- IsinglassIsinglass is a setting agent made from the swim bladders of sturgeon, once the finer alternative to bone gelatine. Powdered or leaf gelatine is the direct substitute and the recipe already allows it. Bloom leaf gelatine in cold water first and squeeze it out; powder can go in dry with the milk.
- The sugar is unquantifiedThe only sugar mentioned is the lump or two rubbed over the lemon to take up the zest, which is nowhere near enough to sweeten a pint mould. Reckon on 2 to 3 tablespoons total, dissolved with the milk, and taste before the gelatine sets.
- Rubbing sugar on lemonDragging a sugar lump over the peel pulls out the oil and leaves the bitter white pith behind. Finely grated zest rubbed into the sugar with your fingers does the same job in less time.
- Cool before the cream goes in"Almost cold" matters. Stirring cold cream into a hot rice base thins it and can make it grainy; let the cooked mixture drop to just above room temperature first.
- Beating to the setting pointBeat only until the mixture thickens and holds a faint trail — the point of it is to lighten the cream slightly before the gelatine takes hold. Beaten past that stage in a chilled bowl it will set before it reaches the mould.
- Setting and turning outA "cool place" meant a larder; use the refrigerator and allow four hours, or overnight. To unmould, dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a wetted plate.
- YieldA pint mould would serve about four to six as written. The suggested fruit jelly "reduced to syrup" appears to mean melting a fruit jelly and reducing it to a pouring syrup.
Moulded creams of this kind were the workhorse sweets of the Victorian dinner table, and the pattern is always the same: a starch-thickened milk base, a setting agent, cream folded in, a shaped mould. What dates this particular recipe is the alternative offered in the ingredients — isinglass or gelatine. Isinglass, prepared from sturgeon bladders, had been the prestige setting agent for well over a century because it gave a clearer, cleaner-tasting jelly than the boiled calves' feet a cook would otherwise have to reduce herself. By the time Cassell's Dictionary was compiled, commercially packaged gelatine had become cheap and reliable enough to name in the same breath, and within a generation isinglass had largely retreated to the brewery, where it is still used to clear beer. The costing of 1s. 2d. is a reminder of what these books were for: such quoted prices are usually taken to have let the mistress of the house check the cook's accounts.