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RICE SOUP (another way)
Take half a pound of rice, pick and scald it, then put it into five pints of boiling water. When it begins to thicken, add the peel of a lemon and a quarter of a pound of raisins. When the soup has boiled enough, beat up the yolks of four eggs in a gill of wine, the juice of two lemons, and white or brown sugar to taste, which stir lightly in. Enough for seven persons.
A sweet rice soup thickened at the end with an egg-and-wine liaison, in the style of Victorian invalid and supper dishes. The whole recipe turns on the last step.
- Do not let it boil after the eggs go inThe yolks beaten with wine and lemon juice are a liaison, not a cooked custard. Draw the pan off the heat, stir the mixture in slowly, and return to no more than a bare steam; a boil will scramble the yolks and the acid from two lemons makes curdling easier still.
- A gillFive fluid ounces in British measure, so a generous half cup. The wine is unspecified; a sherry, madeira or white wine all suit the sweet-and-sour finish.
- Scalding the ricePour boiling water over the picked rice and drain it. Rice of the period was often dusty or gritty, and picking and scalding dealt with that as well as with loose starch. Rinsing modern rice in cold water does much the same job.
- Cooking timeThe recipe gives no time, only 'when it begins to thicken' and 'when the soup has boiled enough'. Modern milled long-grain or pudding rice thickens in 25 to 35 minutes, so start testing early or the soup will be paste.
- Lemon peelPare it in strips with a knife or peeler, avoiding the white pith, and fish the strips out before serving. Grated zest will not sieve out and can turn bitter over a long simmer.
- ConsistencyFive pints for half a pound of rice gives a thin, drinkable soup rather than a pudding. It thickens noticeably as it cools, so slacken with a little hot water if you are reheating leftovers.
- SweeteningAdd the sugar with the eggs and wine as directed, tasting as you go; brown sugar gives a treacly note, white a cleaner lemon flavour.
- YieldThe original says 'enough for seven persons'. Five pints divided seven ways is well over a cup a head, so these are generous soup-course portions rather than sips.
Sweet rice soups of this kind sit at the point where soup, gruel and pudding overlap, and they were a familiar part of British cookery for the sick, the elderly and the light supper table well into the nineteenth century. Rice was a cheap, keeping starch, and it was treated with sugar, dried fruit and lemon as readily as with stock and vegetables; the egg-yolk-and-wine finish is the same thickening trick used in savoury white soups. The wine, lemon and raisins point at the older tradition of nourishing, restorative dishes.