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Rice Meridon
Rice meridon is on a large scale what the rissole is on a small scale, namely, a crust enclosing a stuffing or forcemeat, but the preparation is different. Take half a pound of rice, well washed and picked, boil it in a quart of milk for an hour; by this time the rice will have soaked up the milk and become swollen and tender. Care must be taken to keep it stirred, that it may not stick to the saucepan. Now stir in four ounces of butter, six whole eggs, and a little salt; let it remain over the fire till the eggs thicken the whole; it must be stirred all the time; then set it aside to cool; when cold, take a form well buttered and sprinkled with bread-crumbs, and line about an inch with the cold rice; fill the vacant space with a ragout, or a forcemeat prepared for fowl or fish rissole; cover the top with a thick layer of rice, and bake. When it has baked a quarter of an hour, and the rice has become nicely browned, gently loosen it with a knife from the form, put a dish on the top, and turn it out. Great care must be taken that it does not burst, which will spoil the effect. Serve with a good sauce.
A moulded rice case baked and turned out whole — essentially a timbale. Almost everything depends on the rice paste being stiff enough to hold its shape, and on the filling going in already cooked.
- The filling must be fully cooked firstThe bake is only a quarter of an hour, which browns the crust but will not cook raw meat or fish through. Whatever ragout or forcemeat goes inside should be cooked, well seasoned and still warm when the mould is assembled.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only 'bake'. A fairly hot oven (in the region of 400-425F) is what will brown the crumbed exterior within the fifteen minutes specified; a cooler oven will leave it pale in that time.
- Choose the right riceHalf a pound is roughly 1 1/4 cups. A short or medium grain (pudding rice, arborio, Calrose) is the safer choice, since its starch helps hold the case together along with the eggs and butter; a dry long grain such as basmati gives a looser, more crumbly lining.
- The milk and the hourA quart is 4 cups. The hour is a guide rather than a rule: check from about 30-45 minutes over low heat, stirring often, and stop when the grains are soft and the mass pulls away from the spoon in a mound.
- Six eggs over the fireThis is a stirred custard binding, and it will scramble if rushed. Take the pan off the heat, beat the butter in, let the rice drop below a simmer, then add the beaten eggs and return it to the lowest heat, stirring constantly until it visibly stiffens.
- "A form"A plain charlotte mould, a deep cake tin or a pudding basin; allow generous capacity, since the rice alone comes to well over a quart and a half before the filling goes in, so 2 1/2 to 3 quarts is nearer the mark. Butter generously and coat with dry breadcrumbs, which together give the case its release.
- Turning it outThe recipe loosens and inverts it straight from the oven. A short rest of a few minutes before inverting is a reasonable modern precaution against the bursting the recipe warns of; loosen all round with a knife first, then set the dish on top and turn.
- Yield and sauceNo yield is given; a mould of this size would serve about six. A well-flavoured brown sauce or velout shanding it separately keeps the browned crust from going soft, though the recipe says only 'Serve with a good sauce'.
The entry opens by defining the dish against the rissole — a crust around a stuffing, only larger. The technique is close to the French timbale de riz, in which a lining of rich, egg-bound rice does the work that pastry does elsewhere, and it offered a way of making a handsome centrepiece out of a ragout or the trimmings of a fowl. The name "meridon" does not correspond to any standard French culinary term, and its origin is unclear. What the entry does show is the period's confidence in the moulded dish — a form, a lining, a filling, and the small drama of turning it out intact at table, which the writer is careful to warn about.