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Rice Pancakes, Ground
Mix two table-spoonfuls of ground rice smoothly with a pint of milk, and stir the mixture over the fire till it begins to thicken, but do not let it boil. Pour it into a bowl, and mix with it four ounces of fresh butter. When it is cool, sweeten and flavour it, and mix four well-beaten eggs with it. Drop the preparation into hot fat, and fry the pancakes till they are brightly browned. Serve on a white napkin, sift powdered sugar over them, and send wine sauce or cut lemon to table with them.
A batter enriched to the point of being almost a custard, dropped into hot fat rather than spread in a pan. Read it as a fritter recipe and the proportions make sense.
- Ground riceEssentially rice ground fine, close to what is sold as rice flour, though traditionally a little coarser than the finest rice flours; look for rice flour in Asian groceries or the baking aisle. It is not rice cereal or rice starch, and it is not interchangeable with cornflour, which sets more firmly.
- The pintCassell's pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 cups of milk. Two tablespoons of rice flour in that much milk gives a very loose mixture; it is meant to be, since the eggs do most of the setting.
- Do not let it boilThis is the hinge. A thin rice-and-milk mixture catches easily on the bottom of the pan once it gets too hot, and scorched milk cannot be rescued. Stir over low heat until it just coats the spoon, then take it off.
- Cool before the eggsThe instruction to wait until cool is not fussiness. Four beaten eggs stirred into a hot rice-and-butter mixture will curdle into threads of scrambled egg.
- The butterFour ounces (115 g, one stick) is a great deal of butter for this quantity, and some of it may separate out as the mixture cools. Whisk it back in before the eggs go in, and again before frying.
- Sweeten and flavourNo amount is given. Two to three tablespoons of sugar suits the quantity; flavourings used in comparable period recipes include grated lemon zest, nutmeg, orange-flower water or a spoonful of brandy.
- FryingThe recipe says only 'hot fat'; in modern terms fat at about 350-360F. The batter is loose enough that each spoonful spreads into a thin, ragged fritter, so drop them well apart and turn once. "Brightly browned" means a clear golden brown, not pale.
- The napkinFried dishes were commonly sent up on a folded white napkin, which both dressed the dish and absorbed some fat; a rack or paper does the blotting now. Wine sauce of the period was generally butter and sugar with sherry or Madeira, warmed together.
- YieldRoughly a dozen and a half small fritters, depending on the spoonful; enough for about four as a pudding.
Ground rice was a common Victorian thickener, cheaper than arrowroot and keeping well in a dry store, and it gave puddings and moulds a body flour could not without tasting raw. This appears among a run of pancake variations built on the same base of milk, eggs and a starch, altered by whichever starch was to hand. The finishing directions are of their moment: powdered sugar sifted over, a folded napkin for a dish, and a choice of wine sauce or cut lemon at table all belong to the nineteenth-century sweet course, when fried fritters were sent up hot. Wine sauce, usually sweetened sherry or Madeira with butter, was a frequent accompaniment to fried and boiled puddings of the period.