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Rice Favourites
Take some rice boiled as for curry (see RICE, BOILED, FOR CURRY), add as much rich white sauce of any kind as will make it moist; it should be about as thick as ordinary bread sauce. Grease some small china vases, oval or round, and lay in them some strips of hot boiled ham, seasoned rather highly with French mustard, cayenne, and a little chutney. Place them so that they stand up above the edge of the case. Fill with the rice. Over the tops pour a tea-spoonful of sauce, made by mixing cream and tomato pulp, equal parts, and colouring it a pale pink with cochineal. Between this sauce and the strips of ham put a narrow ring of any cooked white vegetable, cut in shreds, and moistened with cream; dust this with coralline pepper, and put tiny sprigs of fried parsley on the pink sauce. Garnish with fried parsley. Probable cost, 2d. each.
A Victorian savoury served in individual china cases — essentially seasoned rice bound with béchamel, dressed for the table rather than cooked in the dish. Everything is assembled hot from components made in advance, so the hinge is timing rather than technique.
- Get the consistency right"About as thick as ordinary bread sauce" means it should mound softly on a spoon and just hold its shape, not pour and not stand stiff. Add the white sauce a little at a time; over-sauced rice collapses in the case and no amount of garnish rescues it.
- Rice boiled as for curryThe cross-referenced method almost certainly means rice boiled in plenty of salted water and drained dry, grains separate rather than creamy or absorption-steamed. Long-grain rice, well rinsed and boiled until just tender, then left to steam-dry, gives the dry separate grains the dish needs.
- Rich white sauceAny béchamel or velouté made with a good stock or milk and finished with cream. About 150 ml of sauce to 400 g of cooked rice is a sensible starting point.
- China vases and casesThese are small individual porcelain cases of the ramekin or cocotte type; the recipe uses "vases" and "cases" interchangeably. They are serving vessels only -- nothing goes in the oven, so warm them with hot water and dry them before filling.
- French mustard and coralline pepperFrench mustard here means a smooth prepared mustard paste of the Dijon or Bordeaux type, not the sharp English powder. Coralline pepper was sold as a ready-made bright coral-red cayenne preparation; plain cayenne, or paprika mixed with a pinch of cayenne, gives much the same effect.
- CochinealCochineal is carmine, the red dye from scale insects, still sold as a food colour (E120) and not vegetarian. It is there purely for the pale pink; tomato pulp reduced a little further will get you most of the way without it.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly and fry in hot fat for a few seconds only — they crisp almost instantly and turn bitter and olive-brown if left. Drain on paper and add at the last moment, or they wilt on the warm sauce.
- Yield and servingNo quantities are given because the dish is costed per case: figure one case per person as a savoury course or light lunch, and assemble immediately before serving while the ham and rice are still hot.
"Favourites" was the name given to a small individually dressed savoury — served in its own china case, eaten with a fork, and intended to appear either as the savoury course near the end of a formal dinner or as a made dish at luncheon and supper. Recipes of this kind could make use of cooked ham, chicken or vegetables from an earlier meal; the expense is in the cream and the presentation, not the substance. The elaborate finishing — pink sauce, a ring of shredded white vegetable, coralline pepper, fried parsley — seems to reflect the late-nineteenth-century enthusiasm for colour contrast on the plate, and the ready supply of manufactured kitchen dyes and seasonings such as cochineal and coralline pepper that grocers sold by the bottle.