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Rice, Pyramids Of
Boil in milk until it is very soft as much rice as is required. Beat it well to a smooth paste, and press it into small moulds of a pyramid shape, or, failing these, mould it with a spoon into small pyramids about three inches high. Take a little rice out of the centre of these, and fill the empty space with a savoury mince of any kind. Serve the pyramids on a dish, and pour rich brown gravy round them. Garnish the dish with sippets.
A Victorian way of dressing up leftover mince: rice cooked to a paste, moulded, hollowed and filled. The whole thing stands or falls on how stiff the rice is.
- The hinge: cook the rice dryThe rice must absorb nearly all the milk and be beaten while hot so the starch binds it into a paste that will hold a shape. A short-grain pudding rice works; long-grain basmati will not bind and the pyramids will slump.
- QuantitiesNone are given in this entry. As a guide, 200 g (1 cup) of pudding rice to about 750 ml (3 cups) of milk gives four pyramids of roughly three inches. Simmer very gently and stir often, since milk catches on the base of the pan.
- MouldingLine small dariole moulds or egg cups with cling film, or use a cream horn tin, and press the hot rice in firmly. Chill until set before turning out, then hollow the centres with a teaspoon.
- "Savoury mince of any kind"In the period this meant yesterday's cooked roast beef, mutton or veal chopped fine and heated in gravy, not raw minced meat. If you use raw mince, cook it through separately and let it cool slightly before filling.
- Rich brown gravyA proper espagnole or a well-reduced meat stock thickened with a brown roux. A thin gravy will soak into the rice and collapse the pyramids, so keep it glossy and pour it round the base rather than over.
- SippetsSmall triangles or dice of bread fried in butter or dripping until crisp, arranged round the dish. Cut them the day the dish is served; they soften within the hour.
- ServingThe recipe gives no reheating step; if you need one, warm the assembled pyramids briefly in an oven at 350F (180C) before gravying, or serve them warm rather than hot. Two per person would make a light supper dish, one an entrée in a longer meal.
Cassell's belongs to a school of English cookery that prized the moulded entrée: rice, potato, semolina or forcemeat shaped into borders, walls, cases and pyramids to give a re-heated dish the dignity of a made one. The technique owes much to French service, where a bordure de riz or rice croustade held a ragoût, and it filled a practical need in households that carved a large joint on Sunday and had to present the remains for several days without admitting to it. Sippets — a word in English since the sixteenth century, apparently a diminutive of "sop" — are akin to the sops of bread that garnished medieval pottages, and remained a common finish for dishes served in brown gravy. The dish tells you a good deal about late-Victorian middle-class dining: the appearance of a dinner mattered as much as its substance, and a cook was judged on her ability to make cold mutton look like something else entirely.