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Rice Souffle
Prepare the rice as for Gateau de Riz (see RICE, GATEAU OF), only keep the rice rather more limpid, and put in the whites of two more eggs; that is to say, in a rice cake you put eight yolks and as many whites, whereas in a souffle you put only six yolks and eight whites, and a little more butter to determine the souffle. To flavour the souffle, use either lemon-peel, vanilla, orange, orange-flower, noyeau, maraschino, coffee, or any other desired flavouring.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have already made the book's Gateau de Riz and tells you only what to change. Read both together before starting.
- The hinge: the rice base must be looser"more limpid" means the rice base should pour thickly from the spoon rather than hold a shape. A stiff base is much harder to lighten with whipped whites and tends to bake heavy.
- The egg arithmeticWhere the cake takes eight yolks and eight whites, the souffle takes six yolks and eight whites. The two spare whites are the lift; fold them in last, in two additions, and stop while a few streaks still show.
- Scale and yieldScale -- eight eggs makes a large dish. Halved, it becomes three yolks and four whites; judge the dish size against the reduced quantity.
- Timing and serviceTimes will depend on the size of the dish; bake until risen and set with a slight tremble at the centre. It must go from oven to table at once; there is no holding a rice souffle.
- "A little more butter to determine the souffle""Determine" here means to fix or set the texture, not to decide anything. Add perhaps an extra tablespoon of butter to the hot rice, off the heat, before the yolks.
- The flavouringsNoyeau is noyau, an almond-scented liqueur; maraschino is the dry cherry-stone kind, not modern cherry syrup. Orange-flower means orange-flower water, potent enough that a teaspoon is plenty for the full quantity. Lemon peel should be pared in strips and infused in the milk, then removed.
- Buttering and sugaring the dishThe original takes it for granted. Butter the dish upward in strokes and dust with caster sugar, which gives the mixture purchase as it rises and a thin crisp shell.
The souffle belongs to a French repertoire, often said to have reached English cookery books in the early nineteenth century, and its name is simply the past participle of souffler, to blow or puff. Rice versions were popular because they were cheap and forgiving. Cassell's presents it in the dictionary's characteristic way, as an economy of instruction rather than a full recipe, cross-referring the reader to the gateau de riz and listing only the differences in eggs, butter and consistency. The roll-call of flavourings at the end is a snapshot of the late-Victorian store cupboard, where liqueurs such as noyau and maraschino and distilled waters of orange flower did the work now more often done by extracts.