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Scones, Rice
Put one pound of rice, one tea-spoonful of sugar, and half a tea-spoonful of salt into a saucepan with a quart of water, and let it come to the boil. Then set it at the side of the fire, and let it steam for two hours with the lid close, till all the water has been absorbed, and the rice has become soft. Then sprinkle a quarter of a pound of flour on the baking-board, and turn the rice out on it. Let it stand till cool; then divide into six parts, and roll out very thin. Cut each part into three, and bake on not too hot a girdle. Probable cost, 6d.
A Scottish girdle scone made from cooked rice rather than a raised dough — closer to a soft flatbread than to a baking-powder scone. The critical part is getting the rice cooked to a sticky, absorbed mass before any flour goes near it.
- The girdleA girdle is a flat cast-iron griddle. A heavy skillet or a flat cast-iron plate over moderate heat does the same job. "Not too hot" matters here: there is no leavening and no fat, so the scones need time to cook through without scorching, and will take several minutes a side.
- Rice and water ratioA pound of rice (about 2 1/3 cups) to a quart of water is within the usual range for absorption cooking. A short- or medium-grain white rice is the safer choice, as it breaks down and turns sticky; long-grain or basmati tends to stay separate and binds less readily.
- The two-hour steamThe original assumes a coal range with a cool side. A modern equivalent is the lowest possible burner setting under a tight lid, or a covered pot in a 250F oven. Forty-five minutes to an hour is usually enough for the water to be absorbed and the grains to collapse; the two hours reflects a slower, less controllable heat source.
- Flour is a handling medium, not an ingredientThe quarter pound of flour is scattered on the board and worked in only as much as the rice picks up while rolling. Kneading all of it in gives a dry, tough scone. Expect to use rather less than the full amount.
- Roll while cool, not coldWarm rice sticks to everything; refrigerated rice goes firm and cracks at the edges. Let it come to room temperature, then roll.
- Yield and servingSix pieces cut into three gives eighteen thin scones. They are best eaten hot off the girdle with butter, and go leathery within a few hours — they do not keep like a flour scone.
- "Probable cost, 6d."Sixpence in Victorian money. Cassell's attached a probable cost to most of its recipes so a housekeeper could compare dishes at a glance.
Rice scones belong to the Scottish girdle tradition, where the everyday bread of the household was baked flat on iron over the fire rather than in an oven — a habit that long outlasted the arrival of the kitchen range. Recipes of this type, using cooked rice, mashed potato or oatmeal stretched with a little flour, were a way of turning cheap bulk starch into something that ate like bread; potato scones survive in Scotland on the same principle. Rice reached British kitchens in quantity through nineteenth-century trade and was cheap enough to appear in economical cookery of exactly this kind, which is consistent with Cassell's pricing the whole batch at sixpence. The absence of any raising agent is deliberate rather than an oversight: the softness comes from the moisture in the rice, and the scones are meant to be rolled very thin and eaten straight away.