Home › The Principles of Cookery › Rice Fritters
Rice Fritters
Boil three ounces of rice in a pint of new milk till it forms a stiff paste. Sweeten it, flavour with grated lemon-rind, or powdered cinnamon, mace, or nutmeg, and beat it up with two table-spoonfuls of cream, two eggs, and a spoonful of brandy, if liked. Let the rice get cold, and form it into balls about as large as nuts; dip these in egg, roll in bread-crumbs, and fry quickly. When the balls are nicely browned, pile them on a white doily, strew sifted sugar over them, and serve hot. Send wine sauce to table with them. Or, boil three ounces of rice in a pint of milk to a stiff paste. Sweeten and flavour it, and mix with it two well-beaten eggs, an ounce of fresh butter, and two table-spoonfuls of orange marmalade. Stir it over the fire till the eggs are set, then spread it on a dish to cool. Cut it into narrow strips the length and thickness of a finger, dip these into frying-batter, and fry in hot fat till they are brightly browned. Powder sugar over them, and serve on a napkin. The batter may be made as follows. Melt an ounce of butter in one-eighth of a pint of boiling milk, and cool it by adding an equal quantity of cold water. Stir in gradually four ounces of flour, and beat the mixture till it is smooth. Add the well-whisked white of an egg, and use immediately. Or, mix a quarter of a pound of ground rice smoothly with a pint of milk, and add a pinch of salt and three table-spoonfuls of sugar. Stir the mixture over the fire till it leaves the saucepan with the spoon, then pour it out, and when cold add two table-spoonfuls of flour, three eggs, and a little flavouring, and beat the mixture till smooth. Form into fritters and fry in hot fat. When the fritters are nicely browned, drain them on a sieve, and serve on a neatly-folded napkin, with powdered sugar sifted over them. Time to fry, six or seven minutes. Sufficient for five or six persons.
Three related fritters from one rice base: croquette-style balls, marmalade fingers in batter, and a spooned ground-rice batter. All hinge on cooking the rice down until it is genuinely stiff and then chilling it thoroughly.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so three ounces of rice to a pint of milk is roughly 1/2 cup rice to 2 1/2 cups milk. Expect 25-35 minutes of slow simmering, stirred often, to reduce it to a paste that holds a spoon upright.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, as opposed to skimmed or the previous day's. Ordinary whole milk is the substitute; low-fat milk gives a slack, dull paste.
- The eighth of a pintIn the batter, one-eighth of an imperial pint is 2 1/2 fl oz (5 tablespoons), with the same again of cold water. That gives about 5 fl oz of liquid to 4 oz flour, a thick coating batter.
- Ground riceGround rice is rice flour, slightly coarser than the modern superfine sort but interchangeable. A quarter pound is about 3/4 cup.
- Chill properlyThe instruction to let the rice get cold is the one that decides whether the fritters survive the fat. Spread it no more than an inch thick and refrigerate until firm, ideally an hour or more; warm rice paste slumps or bursts.
- Fat temperature and timingFry at 350-375F. The stated six or seven minutes suits the larger battered fingers and spooned fritters; nut-sized crumbed balls brown in two to three minutes and will dry out if held longer.
- Sifted sugar and wine sauceSifted sugar is powdered or icing sugar. The recipe does not say what the wine sauce contained; period wine sauces were generally sweet sauces of wine and sugar with butter, and sometimes egg, served warm in a boat.
- YieldThe book closes the entry with 'Sufficient for five or six persons'; it gives no count of balls, fingers or fritters.
Rice fritters sit in a long European line of sweet fried starch puddings: cook a grain stiff in milk, sweeten and spice it, chill it until sliceable, then crumb or batter and fry. The same logic produces Italian frittelle di riso, French croquettes de riz and the crumbed semolina fritters of Austrian cookery. That Cassell's offers three variants in a single entry is characteristic of the New Dictionary, which was assembled as a reference work rather than a set of individual dishes, and of the late-Victorian kitchen's habit of building dessert out of pantry staples: rice, milk, eggs, marmalade, a spoonful of brandy if the house kept it. The spicing choices given here -- lemon rind, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg -- are the standard English sweet-pudding flavourings of the period, mace and nutmeg still in everyday use in a way they largely no longer are. Serving on a folded napkin or doily was the conventional presentation for anything fried, the linen doing the work of draining off the last of the fat at table.