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RICE CROQUETTES (another way)
Take half a pound of rice, and boil it in a quart of milk till tender, add four ounces of butter, six yolks of eggs, and three table-spoonfuls of sugar; let these ingredients boil a few minutes, and then leave the mixture to get cold. If liked, a table-spoonful of orange-flower water or grated lemon-peel may be added. When quite cold, cut the preparation into the shape and size of sausages; roll these in beaten egg, strew them with bread-crumbs, and bake of a fine brown colour.
A sweet rice croquette of the classic English pudding school: rice cooked down in milk, enriched with butter and yolks, chilled until sliceable, then crumbed and browned. The whole thing hangs on getting the mixture stiff enough to cut.
- The hinge: cook the rice dryHalf a pound of rice (about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) to a quart of milk needs to reduce to a stiff, almost pasty mass, not a loose pudding. Cook it uncovered over low heat, stirring often, until a spoon drawn through leaves a clear channel; if there is free milk left when you add the yolks, the mixture will never firm up enough to shape.
- Rice to useA short or medium grain pudding rice, arborio, or ordinary short-grain white gives the starch that binds these. Long-grain basmati or parboiled rice stays separate and the croquettes crumble.
- The yolksSix yolks into hot rice will curdle if the pan is at a rolling boil. Take the pan off the heat, beat the yolks with the sugar, stir them in, then return to low heat for two or three minutes, stirring constantly, until the mass thickens and pulls from the sides. The original gives no guidance on heat beyond 'let these ingredients boil a few minutes'.
- ChillingSpread the mixture about three-quarters of an inch deep on a buttered tray or shallow tin, press a sheet of buttered paper or plastic on the surface, and refrigerate at least four hours, ideally overnight. Cold is not optional here — warm mixture will not hold a sausage shape.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold and still potent. A tablespoon is generous by modern standards; start with a teaspoon and taste. Grated zest of one lemon is the alternative.
- CrumbingFor a coating that survives the oven, roll the shapes in flour first, then beaten egg, then fine dry breadcrumbs. Panko browns well but reads coarser than the fine dry breadcrumbs the original implies.
- OvenThe original gives no temperature. Around 400F on a buttered or parchment-lined tray, turning once, roughly 20-25 minutes, browns them evenly. Brushing the crumbs with melted butter before baking helps toward the 'fine brown colour' the recipe asks for.
- Yield and servingMakes about 16 croquettes, serving six to eight. Send them out hot, dusted with caster sugar, with apricot jam warmed to a sauce or a plain custard.
Rice boiled in milk with butter, yolks and sugar is the base of a whole family of nineteenth-century sweets — rice pudding, rice moulds, croquettes, and the fried rice balls that show up across Europe. Starch plus egg yolk plus cooling gives a paste firm enough to cut, egg and crumb, and cook again. The technique is the same one behind savoury croquettes and the panada that binds a quenelle. Orange-flower water, offered here as an optional flavouring, was a standard confectioner's perfume in Victorian Britain, distilled from bitter orange blossom and used where a modern cook reaches for vanilla; its slow retreat from English baking through the twentieth century is one reason recipes of this vintage can taste unplaceably old-fashioned. Cassell's habit of giving "another way" after a first version reflects the dictionary format of the book, which sets out to catalogue variants rather than pick a favourite.