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Rice-Flour for Thickening Soups and Sauces
Mix pounded spices, salt and pepper, or sugar with rice-flour, and make it into a smooth paste by adding gradually as much cold liquor as is needed. Beat with the back of a wooden spoon till no lumps remain, and pour the liquor to be thickened gradually over it, boiling. Return the liquor to the saucepan, boil it again, and stir over the fire for ten minutes. Two small table-spoonfuls of rice-flour will thicken a quart of soup.
A working method rather than a dish: a cold-water starch slurry, the Victorian alternative to a flour-and-butter roux. The proportions still hold.
- The hinge: slurry cold, add liquid hotRice flour lumps instantly in hot liquid. Mix it to a smooth paste with cold liquid first, then pour the boiling soup onto the paste in a thin stream while stirring, exactly as written. Adding the paste to the pot instead of the pot's contents to the paste is what produces lumps.
- QuantitiesTwo small tablespoonfuls to a quart is roughly 15-20 g per litre, which gives a light nappe rather than a thick sauce. Period spoon measures were not standardised, and the recipe itself specifies "small" spoonfuls, so start at the low end and judge by the coating on the spoon.
- "Rice-flour" and "ground rice"Both terms appear in books of this period. Rice flour is finely milled rice, sold today in most supermarkets and in any Asian grocer; ground rice is coarser and will read as gritty in a smooth sauce. Do not substitute glutinous or sweet rice flour, which sets stretchy and cloudy.
- Why ten minutesNot caution but flavour. Rice starch thickens within a minute of boiling, but a raw, chalky taste lingers unless it cooks out. Keep it at a bare simmer and stir, since a thickened soup scorches on the pan bottom readily.
- "Cold liquor"Liquor here just means liquid: water, stock, or milk, whatever the finished soup is based on. It is not alcoholic.
- The seasoning firstSpices, salt, pepper or sugar are mixed into the dry flour so they disperse before the starch gels. Once thickened, a sauce takes added seasoning less evenly, so this ordering is deliberate.
- How it behaves compared with wheat flourRice starch gives a cleaner, more translucent finish than a white roux and carries no gluten, which is why it suits clear-toned soups. It also thins if held hot for a long time or beaten hard once set, so thicken close to serving.
Thickening was taught in this period as a class of operation rather than as part of any one dish, with roux, arrowroot, potato flour, ground rice and egg-and-cream liaisons each matched to a particular clarity and richness. Rice flour earned its place in Victorian kitchens on two grounds. It was cheap and keeps well, and it belonged to the large body of what the period called invalid cookery, where rice-based dishes were considered gentle on the digestion; the same tins of ground rice served for puddings, thin gruels and moulds. The starch itself is far older than the book, rice having been milled for thickening across South and East Asia long before European cookery writers began ranking it against wheat.