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Rice Soup
Take one-eighth of a pound of Carolina rice, picked clean, and washed in two or three different waters till no smell or dirt remain. Blanch it in boiling water, and drain it. Then take some rich broth or stock, season it well, throw the rice in and let it boil, but not so as to be too much done, for then it breaks and does not look well.
A single-page instruction that assumes you already have good stock on hand. The whole point is restraint: the rice must stop just short of tender so the grains stay whole in the bowl.
- The quantityOne-eighth of a pound is 2 oz, roughly a third of a cup of raw long-grain rice. The recipe gives no quantity of broth; on this proportion 1 to 1.5 quarts would give a lightly thickened soup for about four, and much more rice than this tends towards porridge.
- Carolina riceIn the nineteenth century this meant the long-grain white rice grown in the Carolina lowcountry, prized for cooking to separate, unbroken grains. Any modern long-grain white rice behaves the same way. Avoid arborio or other short-grain types, which release starch and cloud the broth.
- WashingThe recipe wants the rice washed "till no smell or dirt remain", a real concern with unpolished nineteenth-century rice; the rinsing also removes surface starch, which is why it still matters. Rinse in a sieve under cold water until the run-off is clear, three or four changes.
- BlanchingTwo to three minutes in plenty of boiling water, then drain. This sets the grain and, more usefully, keeps the loose starch out of your finished broth so the soup stays clear.
- The hinge: stop earlyEverything the recipe warns about happens in the last two minutes. Simmer the blanched rice in the seasoned stock for about 10 minutes and taste; pull it while the centre is still firm, since it will keep cooking in the hot liquid off the heat.
- Season the stock first"Season it well" comes before the rice for a reason. Salt the broth to the strength you want in the bowl, because rice absorbs liquid and will taste flat if you correct it only at the end.
- ServingBest served straight away. Rice soup does not hold or reheat well: standing overnight the grains swell, break and absorb most of the broth.
Rice soup belongs to a family of plain restorative broths that Victorian cookery books recommended for invalids, children and the opening course of a formal dinner alike, where a clear soup thickened with a little grain preceded heavier dishes. The insistence on Carolina rice reflects the trade of the period: rice from the South Carolina and Georgia coast was a major export and its name became shorthand in cookbooks for a quality long grain, though East Indian rice, Patna among it, was a substantial presence on the British market at the same time. The caution about grains breaking and spoiling the look of the dish shows how much weight the period put on the appearance of a clear soup at table.