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Rice Pancakes
Boil a quarter of a pound of rice in a pint of milk till it is a smooth stiff paste. Turn it out, and when cool mix with it four eggs well beaten, half a pint of cream, a pinch of salt, and a little sugar and flavouring. Add four ounces of clarified butter, and beat the batter till it is quite smooth. Melt a little dripping or butter in a frying-pan, and fry the pancakes quickly. Sift powdered sugar over them, and send cut lemons or orange marmalade to table with them. If the batter is not sufficiently thick a little flour may be added to it. This will depend upon the quality of the rice. Time to fry the pancakes, five to seven minutes. Probable cost, 2s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A thick, custardy pancake built on cooked rice rather than flour — closer to a set batter than a crepe. The main adjustments are imperial volumes and the frying, which needs a gentler hand than the word "quickly" suggests.
- Imperial measuresA Victorian pint is 20 fl oz, so the rice cooks in 2½ US cups of milk; the half pint of cream is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. A quarter pound of rice is 4 oz, roughly ⅔ cup uncooked.
- The riceUse a short-grain pudding rice or arborio, which breaks down into the smooth stiff paste the recipe wants. Long-grain and parboiled rice hold their shape and will leave the batter grainy, which is part of why the book hedges about adding flour.
- Cook the rice down properlyThe hinge of the dish. The rice must be simmered gently, stirred often, until the milk is fully absorbed and the mass is genuinely stiff — 30 to 40 minutes on low heat. A loose, soupy rice gives a batter that will not set in the pan no matter how much flour is added.
- Cool before the eggs"When cool" is doing real work: four beaten eggs stirred into hot rice will scramble. Let the paste come down to warm room temperature first.
- Four ounces of clarified butterFour ounces of the finished clarified butter, which means starting with rather more whole butter (about 5 oz), since water and milk solids are lost in the skimming. It is what keeps the pancakes tender despite the starch; do not cut it and expect the same result. Ghee is a close stand-in, though it is cooked longer and tastes nuttier.
- "A little flavouring""A little sugar and flavouring" -- In a book of this date the flavouring would most often be grated nutmeg, lemon zest, orange-flower water, or a spoonful of brandy. Any of these suits; a scrape of nutmeg and the zest of a lemon is the safest reading.
- Frying"Quickly" means over a lively rather than a timid heat, but this batter is thick and eggy, and the five to seven minutes most likely covers a single pancake turned once rather than the whole batch. Medium heat, a well-greased pan, and patience — rushing them browns the outside while the centre stays raw.
- Yield and servingFive or six people; the recipe gives no pancake count, and how many you get will depend on the size you fry. Sifted powdered sugar with lemon wedges or orange marmalade alongside is exactly what the recipe directs, and still the right presentation.
- Probable cost2s. 2d. is two shillings and twopence, a figure the book gives so a housekeeper could price a dish against her weekly allowance. It has no modern equivalent worth quoting.
Rice pancakes belong to a family of British nursery and supper dishes built on rice boiled soft in milk — the same foundation as rice pudding, redirected into a frying pan. Rice reached English kitchens as an expensive import and was long treated as a spiced sweetmeat, but by the nineteenth century supply from India and the Carolinas had made it cheap enough to be an everyday thickener and pudding grain. The costing and the "sufficient for" line are characteristic of the book, which appears written for households managing to a set budget and wanting to know the outlay before committing the eggs and cream. The note that thickness "will depend upon the quality of the rice" is a reminder that a Victorian cook bought rice loose from a grocer's sack, where what arrived varied from sack to sack.