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Rice Fritters
Boil 3 ounces of rice in a pint of new milk till it forms a stiff paste. Sweeten it, flavor with grated lemon rind, or powdered cinnamon, mace, or nutmeg, and beat it up with 2 tablespoonfuls of cream, 2 eggs, and 1 spoonful of brandy, if liked. Let the rice get cold, and form it into balls about as large as nuts; dip these in egg, roll in bread crumbs, and fry quickly. When the balls are nicely browned, pile them on a white doily, strew sifted sugar over them, and serve hot. Send wine sauce to table with them. Or, boil 3 ounces of rice in a pint of milk to a stiff paste. Sweeten and flavor it, and mix with it 2 well-beaten eggs, 1 ounce of fresh butter, and 2 tablespoonfuls of orange marmalade. Stir it over the fire till the eggs are set, then spread it on a dish to cool. Cut it into narrow strips the length and thickness of a finger, dip these into frying-batter, and fry in hot fat till they are brightly browned. Powder sugar over them, and serve on a napkin. The batter may be made as follows: Melt 1 ounce of butter in half a quarter of a pint of boiling milk, and cool it by adding an equal quantity of cold water. Stir in gradually 4 ounces of flour, and beat the mixture till it is smooth. Add the well-whisked white of an egg, and use immediately. Or, mix 1/4 of a pound of ground rice smoothly with a pint of milk, and add a pinch of salt and 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Stir the mixture over the fire till it leaves the saucepan with the spoon, then pour it out, and when cold add 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, 3 eggs, and a little flavoring, and beat the mixture till smooth. Fry it in spoonfuls in hot fat. When the fritters are nicely browned, drain them on a sieve, and serve on a neatly folded napkin, with powdered sugar sifted over them. Time to fry, six or seven minutes. Sufficient for five or six persons.
Three separate fritters share one heading here: rice croquettes rolled in crumbs, marmalade-rice fingers in batter, and a soft ground-rice batter dropped from a spoon. Read to the end before starting, since the timing and yield at the close belong to the third version.
- The hinge: cook the rice down to a paste3 oz rice (a scant half cup) to a pint of milk is a very wet ratio, and it wants 30-40 minutes of slow simmering with frequent stirring until the spoon leaves a clean track. Underdone paste will not hold a ball, and the croquettes burst in the fat.
- Chill properly"Let the rice get cold" means thoroughly cold, ideally several hours in the refrigerator. Warm rice paste is unshapeable and the crumb coating slides off.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, unskimmed. Use whole milk; low-fat gives a thin, sticky paste.
- Ground riceThis is rice flour, traditionally a little coarser than the fine white rice flour sold today. Either works; the coarser grind gives more texture.
- "Half a quarter of a pint"An eighth of a pint, i.e. 1/4 cup by US measure, or 2 1/2 fl oz if the author was working from the imperial pint. The batter is forgiving either way, but start at the smaller amount and loosen with the cold water until it coats a finger thickly.
- Frying temperature"Quickly" and "hot fat" correspond to roughly 350-375F in modern terms, though the book gives no temperature. Below that the fritters soak up fat; much above it the coating colours before the inside is warmed through. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop.
- Frying timesThe croquettes and the battered fingers need only a few minutes to colour, since the rice inside is already cooked. The six or seven minutes given at the close most likely applies to the spoon-dropped ground-rice batter, which contains uncooked flour and egg.
- Wine sauceA period sweet sauce: sugar, butter and a sweet white wine or sherry thickened lightly, served warm. A sabayon or a plain fruit sauce serves the same purpose.
- Yield and serviceFive or six as a sweet course. The doily and folded napkin blotted frying fat and dressed the dish; a rack over paper keeps the crust crisper.
Rice, macaroni, sago and semolina were grouped in Victorian and Edwardian household manuals as "farinaceous foods" rather than treated as grains in the modern sense. The dish itself belongs to the croquette family that spread through English cooking from French practice in the nineteenth century, and the pattern is consistent across the three versions given here: a stiff milk-cooked paste, thoroughly cooled so it can be handled, then crumbed or battered and dropped into deep fat. Commercial orange marmalade was widely available in British kitchens by the late 1800s, which is why it can appear here simply as a flavouring. The brandy is optional even in the original.