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Rice Soup, White
Wash a quarter of a pound of best Carolina rice in two or three waters, throw it into fast-boiling water, and keep it boiling for five minutes. Drain it on a sieve, and put it into two quarts of nicely-flavoured white stock, also boiling. Let all simmer gently together until the rice is tender. Add three-quarters of a pint of thick cream, season with salt, cayenne, and pounded mace, simmer a minute or two longer, and serve. Time, one hour. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A white soup in the old sense: stock, rice and cream, thickened by nothing but the starch of the grain. Two things decide whether it works — the cream must not boil, and the rice must be cooked to the point of collapse rather than to al dente.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so two imperial quarts is 80 imperial fl oz, about 10 US cups (2½ US quarts) of stock, and the three-quarters of a pint of cream is 15 imperial fl oz, close to 2 US cups. A quarter pound of rice is a scant ⅔ cup.
- Carolina riceA long-grain white rice grown in the Carolina Lowcountry, prized in the nineteenth-century trade; commercial cultivation collapsed in the early twentieth century after a run of hurricanes. Any plain long-grain white rice stands in; avoid parboiled or converted rice, which resists breaking down and will not thicken the soup.
- Why the rice is blanched firstFive minutes in fast-boiling water and a rinse washes off surface starch and any milling dust, so the finished soup stays clean-tasting and pale rather than gluey. Do not skip the draining.
- The hour is generousThe stated time covers preparation as much as cooking. Blanched long-grain rice will be tender in a good white stock in 20 to 30 minutes; taste rather than watch the clock, and add stock if it thickens past the consistency you want.
- Cream at the endOnce the cream goes in, keep the pan below a simmer. Boiled cream in a lightly bodied soup separates and leaves a grainy film, which is exactly what "simmer a minute or two longer" is guarding against.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg, warmer and less sweet than the seed. Ground mace from a jar works; use about ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon and add it with the salt so it has a moment to bloom in the hot liquid.
- Cayenne, not black pepperCayenne was commonly preferred in white dishes because it does not speckle them. A pinch is enough -- the point is warmth at the back of the throat, not heat.
- Stock quality is the whole dish"Nicely-flavoured white stock" means veal or chicken bones simmered without browning, so the soup stays ivory. A dark or heavily reduced stock will read as muddy here; a weak one leaves the soup tasting of nothing but cream.
- YieldSix to eight as a first course, in small cups rather than bowls. It thickens considerably on standing and will need loosening with hot stock if reheated.
White soups — thin cream soups deliberately kept pale — were a fixture of nineteenth-century British dinner service, where a menu often offered a choice of two soups, one clear or brown and one white, and the white one was expected to be delicate to the point of blandness. Rice was among the cheapest ways to give such a soup body without a flour roux or the pounded almonds of an older soupe à la reine. The call for "best Carolina" rice reflects the premium reputation Carolina rice held in the British market, cookbook writers using "Carolina" much as later ones wrote "basmati" — a place name doing the work of a grade. Mace and cayenne appear together here for a practical reason as much as a culinary one, being warm seasonings that could be added to a white sauce or soup without spoiling its colour.