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Rice Paste for Tartlets, Etc
Boil a quarter of a pound of ground rice in half a pint of water till the liquor is absorbed. Squeeze it in a napkin till quite dry, then pound it in a mortar to a paste with a pinch of salt, a beaten egg, and an ounce of fresh butter. Roll it out till very thin, and it will be ready for use. Or, rub a quarter of a pound of fresh butter into half a pound of ground rice. Add a table-spoonful of sifted sugar and a pinch of salt, and make the mixture into a paste with cold water. Roll it out, spread a little more butter upon it, or not, according to the richness required. Dredge flour under and over it in rolling, and it will be ready for use. Tartlets made with this pastry should be eaten the day they are made.
Two rice-flour pastries, one cooked and pounded, one rubbed like shortcrust. Both are naturally gluten-free, which is the source of their virtues and all of their difficulties.
- The hinge: no gluten, no stretchRice flour cannot form a gluten network, so the paste will crack rather than stretch as you roll. Roll between two sheets of baking parchment, patch tears by pressing them closed with a fingertip, and lift the sheet into the tin rather than draping it.
- "Ground rice"This is rice flour, sold today as fine white rice flour. Victorian ground rice was coarser than modern flour and closer to what is now labelled cream of rice; the finer the grind, the less gritty the finished tartlet.
- MeasuresA quarter of a pound is about 115 g, half a pound 225 g. Half a pint is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or roughly 1 1/4 US cups.
- The first methodBoiling until the liquor is absorbed gelatinises the starch, which is what gives this version its cohesion. Expect a stiff, sticky mass; the wringing in a napkin is not optional, since residual water makes a paste that will not roll. A food processor does the pounding faster than a mortar.
- The second methodRub the butter in as for shortcrust and add the water a spoonful at a time - rice flour absorbs less than wheat, and the line between crumbly and sloppy is narrow. The extra butter spread on the rolled sheet is simply a richness adjustment, as the recipe says: 'or not, according to the richness required.'
- Dredging flourThe recipe says only 'dredge flour', which in a Victorian kitchen would most likely have meant wheat flour on the board. Dredge with more rice flour instead if the pastry needs to stay gluten-free; it works as well for dusting.
- BakingNo temperature is given. Blind-bake tartlet shells at 375-400F (190-200C) for 12-15 minutes until dry and pale gold. Rice pastry colours reluctantly, so judge by firmness rather than browning, and watch the last few minutes as it goes from set to sandy quickly.
- Yield and keepingThe second method uses twice the ground rice of the first and will line correspondingly more tins; judge by the size of your tartlet moulds. The instruction to eat them the same day is sound: gelatinised rice starch retrogrades overnight and the shells turn chalky and dry.
Rice pastry belongs to a long line of nineteenth-century kitchen economies in which one starch stood in for another -- rice flour was cheap, kept well, and was already a fixture of the English larder for puddings and blancmanges. Cassell's offers it as a lighter and less rich alternative for small sweet tartlets; the two methods it gives, one boiled and pounded and one rubbed cold, mirror the standard division between cooked and uncooked pastes of the period. Ground rice also carried a reputation as suitable for invalids and delicate digestions. The frank admission that the tartlets must be eaten the day they are made is an honest bit of writing, and reflects a real limitation of starch pastry that no amount of technique removes.