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Rice Puffs
Take a pint of rice-flour, and add enough boiling water or milk to make a batter. When cold, add four eggs well beaten, together with a tea-spoonful of salt. Drop this in large spoonfuls into hot fat, and fry to a light brown.
A plain rice-flour fritter, closer to a savoury beignet than a sweet. The recipe leaves the batter's thickness to judgement, which is the one thing worth getting right before the fat goes on.
- The pint of rice flourThis is a volume measure, not a weight. Depending on whether the pint is American (16 fl oz) or imperial (20 fl oz), that is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups, or somewhere around 10-12 oz (285-340 g); rice flours vary in density, so treat any figure as approximate. Scald it with liquid gradually rather than all at once, since rice flour absorbs unevenly.
- Batter consistency"Enough boiling water or milk to make a batter" leaves the thickness to the cook's judgement. Aim for a thick paste that holds its shape on the spoon and only slowly slumps -- roughly the texture of choux. Too loose and the puffs spread and soak up fat.
- Why the water must be boilingRice flour has no gluten, so the structure comes entirely from gelatinised starch plus egg. Scalding sets the starch and gives the batter the body it needs to trap steam and puff. Cold liquid gives a gritty, flat fritter.
- Cool before the eggsThe instruction to wait until cold is not fussiness -- eggs stirred into hot paste will scramble in streaks. Lukewarm is fine; hot is not.
- Egg sizeEggs sold today are graded and often larger than the average kitchen egg of the period, though this varied. Four modern large eggs into this quantity of flour may loosen the batter noticeably, so consider holding the fourth back and judging before adding it.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat". For deep frying, a modern working range of about 350-365F (175-185C) suits this kind of batter: much below and the puffs absorb grease; much above and the outside browns before the centre sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt for a pint of flour points to a savoury rather than a sweet fritter; the recipe itself specifies no accompaniment or course. For a sweet version, halve the salt and dust with sugar after draining.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; "large spoonfuls" from this quantity would plausibly make somewhere around twenty, enough for a few people. Best eaten within minutes of draining, as they toughen as they cool.
Rice flour was a familiar item in the nineteenth-century British store cupboard, sold ground fine for puddings, thickening and invalid cookery, and cheaper than wheat flour. The recipe reads as an exercise in a basic technique: scald a starch, enrich it with egg, drop it into fat. The same logic underlies fritters across a great many cuisines, from the batters of West Africa to the mochi-adjacent fried cakes of East Asia, though there is no need to claim any direct descent here.