Carrie Lee Stoyle
IMPRIONIS
One Spanish onion (cut twice in rounds); lay in deep saucepan. One cup of washed rice; lay on top of onions. Little salt sprinkled on. One cup cold water; cover, let gently simmer until both are tender (fifteen minutes). One teaspoon curry powder. One tablespoon butter; add little salt and one-half cup hot water; make a paste, stir into saucepan with the rice and onion. Break two eggs on top of all. When eggs are set (poached), serve on hot plates.
Lord help you if you don't enjoy it.
Carrie Lee storle Fondially
½ cup butter 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons Royal baking pow- 3 eggs (whites) 1 cup sugar 2/3 cup milk ½ cake chocolate der
1 cup sugar 3 eggs (yolks) Butter (small piece) 1/4 cup milk 2 teaspoons corn starch Vanilla to taste My friends consider this a delicious "Chocolate Cake." Yours sincerely,
Two separate contributions sit side by side here: a one-pot curried rice with poached eggs, and a chocolate cake given as an ingredient list only. The rice dish is the one you can cook from as written.
- The hinge: liquid and lidOne cup of rice to one cup of cold water is a tight ratio, and it only works because the onion rounds give off moisture and the lid is kept on. Do not lift it to stir; the rice steams rather than boils.
- Fifteen minutes is optimisticTiming -- White long-grain rice needs 15-18 minutes at a bare simmer, then a rest off the heat, so the recipe's fifteen minutes is the bottom of the range. Add the extra half cup of hot water with the curry paste as directed and allow another few minutes for it to be absorbed before the eggs go in.
- Spanish onionA large, mild, pale-skinned onion, still sold under that name. "Cut twice in rounds" most likely means two cuts across, giving three thick slabs that break into rings and act as a raft under the rice.
- Curry powder of the periodCommercial curry powder of this era was turmeric-heavy and mild by current standards. A teaspoon of a modern hot blend will read very differently; taste the butter paste before it goes in.
- Poaching the eggs on topBreak the eggs onto the surface, cover, and let the trapped steam set them, about 4-5 minutes for a firm white and soft yolk. Whites set at about 145F, yolks at about 158F.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice and two eggs serves two as a light supper.
- The cake's butter figureThe list reads 1 1/2 cup butter against 2 cups flour and 1 cup sugar, which is far outside the usual proportions for a layer cake. It may be a garbled 1/2 cup; either way the amount as printed cannot be relied on.
- The cake has no methodOnly ingredients are given, with no mixing order, pan size, temperature or time. The omissions are large enough that a current recipe is the better guide.
- Cake chocolate"Cake chocolate" means unsweetened baking chocolate sold in blocks scored into squares, roughly one ounce each. The icing ingredients -- yolks, milk and cornstarch -- point to a stirred custard cooked over low heat rather than a modern buttercream, though no method is given.
Celebrity cookbooks of this sort collected contributions from well-known stage performers, printed with a facsimile signature, as here. The contributions were often short, personal and unedited, which is why the closing line reads like a note rather than an instruction. The dish itself belongs to the long Anglo-American appetite for curried rice that is generally traced to the British in India and settled into supper cookery as kedgeree, curried eggs and rice, and dozens of unnamed variations like this one. Spanish onions were often said to be the prized mild onion of the period, sold by name.