Home › The Principles of Cookery › Rice Turban
Rice Turban
Prepare the rice as in the recipe, RICE, CAS SEROLE OF. Cut some apples into quarters, and stew them in syrup. Take particular care that the quarters are kept whole. Dish the rice; put a gallipot in the centre, to form a vacancy, into which you are afterwards to pour a vanilla cream. Dress the rice round the gallipot, and level it with the back of a spoon. Next place the apples round the rice, till you have reached the summit of it, and put the whole into the oven, but only leave it there time enough to dry up the syrup which sticks round the apples. Next decorate with crystallized fruits of different colours, such as greengages, apricots, and cherries; and when you are ready to send up, remove the gallipot and fill the vacancy with the vanilla cream.
A moulded rice entremets of the French pattern, built by hand rather than in a mould. Nothing here is difficult, but the shape depends entirely on the rice being cooked stiff enough to hold a wall.
- The hinge: stiff riceThe cross-referenced "casserole of rice" is presumably rice cooked in sweetened milk until it is thick enough to stand when heaped and smoothed; this recipe does not restate it. If it slumps at all on the dish it will not hold a turban; cook it down further and let it cool to just-warm before shaping.
- GallipotA small straight-sided glazed earthenware ointment jar. Any straight-sided heatproof vessel of about 3 inches across does the same job — a ramekin, a tin can with both ends removed, or a plain tumbler if the assembly is not going into the oven.
- "Turban"The name describes the finished silhouette: a ring or dome of rice with a well in the middle, wound round with fruit. It is a shape instruction, not an ingredient.
- Keeping the apple quarters wholeUse a firm variety that holds together — Braeburn, Boskoop, Granny Smith — cored and peeled, and poach them in the syrup at a bare tremble rather than a boil. Turn them with a spoon, never stir, and lift them out the moment a skewer goes through with slight resistance.
- The oven stageThis is a drying step only, not baking. The recipe gives no temperature and asks only for time enough to dry up the syrup sticking round the apples: a low oven, briefly. Longer and the rice skins over and the fruit collapses.
- Vanilla creamSince it is poured into the vacancy at the last moment, this is most likely a pouring custard — milk or cream, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla, stirred over low heat until it coats the spoon, roughly 175-180F. Make it in advance and keep it covered; the recipe has it added only when you are ready to send up.
- Crystallised fruitsCandied greengages and apricots are specialist items now; glacé cherries, candied angelica and candied citrus peel give the same effect. Rinse very sticky pieces briefly and pat dry so they sit rather than slide.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; a turban built on a dish of about 9 inches would serve six to eight. The cream is poured in only when you are ready to send up.
The turban belongs to the family of moulded rice entremets that came into English cookery books from the French repertoire of the early nineteenth century, where sweetened rice cooked in milk was used as a structural material — piped, moulded, ringed and domed — as much as a pudding. Related moulded rice dishes such as riz à l'impératrice, and the various rice borders, carried stewed fruit to Victorian tables. The instructions here are largely about assembly: the gallipot standing in for a mould, the fruit laid in courses up the side, the brief oven stage that sets a glaze rather than cooks anything. The crystallised greengages and apricots would have been the costly element, added at the end where they would be seen.