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Rice Soup, Italian
Wash four ounces of rice, drain it, and put it into a saucepan with two ounces of fresh butter, a cupful of stock, and a seasoning of salt and white pepper. Let it simmer gently until it is tender. Cut two large turnips into small pieces, and fry these in butter till they are lightly browned. Drain the fat from them, and stew them in about a pint of stock. Add the boiled rice, and serve. Send grated Parmesan to table with the soup. Time, one hour and a half. Probable cost, exclusive of the stock, 9d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A thin risotto in soup form, and the cooking method matters more than the ingredient list: the rice absorbs a small amount of stock rather than swimming in it.
- The hinge: cook the rice in barely any liquidFour ounces (about 1/2 cup) of rice with a single cupful of stock and 2 oz butter is a tight ratio, and the rice may want a little more liquid before it is tender. Add stock a few tablespoons at a time and stir, as for risotto, so the grains stay separate and the starch thickens the finished soup.
- Rice to useA Victorian British kitchen meant plain long or medium grain rice, but an Italian soup of this kind is better with arborio or carnaroli, which hold their shape and release starch.
- TimingsThe stated hour and a half covers the whole operation, not the rice. Rice needs 18-25 minutes; the diced turnip 8-10 minutes to brown and another 15 in stock. Judge by tenderness, not the clock, or the turnip collapses.
- TurnipsTwo large turnips most likely means white turnips rather than swede. Swede (rutabaga) is sweeter and coarser and will dominate the dish. Cut to a small, even dice so the pieces brown before they soften.
- StockA pint in an English book of this date is 20 fl oz; 'a cupful' was not a fixed measure, so read it as roughly 8 fl oz. Expect to use more. The soup is largely stock and butter, so a well-made brown or chicken stock is the difference between this and hot rice water.
- SeasoningWhite pepper was probably chosen to keep the pale soup free of black flecks; use it or not as you prefer. Salt lightly at the start, since Parmesan at the table adds a good deal.
- YieldTwo or three as written, as a first course. The quantities double cleanly.
- ServingServe loose enough to eat with a spoon. It thickens as it stands, so hold back a little stock to slacken it just before it goes to table, and pass the grated Parmesan separately as directed.
The label "Italian" here signals two things to a late-Victorian reader: rice as a soup body rather than a side dish, and grated Parmesan handed round at table. Both were understood in Britain as Italian habits, and the recipe is essentially a domesticated minestra di riso, of the kind that turns whatever root vegetable is to hand into a light first course. The costing in pence, "exclusive of the stock," suggests that stock was taken for granted in a well-run kitchen as a by-product of the week's meat, and so was not counted as an expense. Turnips may well appear because they were cheap and available for most of the year in Britain; an Italian cook would as readily have used onion, leek or pumpkin.