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Savory Rice Soup
Wash half a cupful of rice. Place in boiling water, and boil for twelve minutes. Drain the water off, pour 1 quart of stock over it, and cook until the rice becomes tender; then rub through a strainer and return to the fire. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs; add half a cup of cream to them, then add this to the soup, and stir for a moment. Do not allow it to boil. If necessary, add more seasoning, and serve.
A classic rice velouté thickened with an egg-and-cream liaison. Everything hinges on the last thirty seconds: once the yolks go in, the soup must stay below a simmer.
- The liaison is the whole dishYolks curdle around 160-170F, well under boiling. Temper them first by whisking a ladle of hot soup into the yolk-cream mixture, then return it all to the pot off the heat or over the lowest flame, stirring until it thickens slightly. If it does break, a blender will sometimes bring it back.
- Rice and the parboilThe twelve-minute boil-and-drain sheds surface starch before the rice goes into the stock (the recipe has already had you wash it). Use a medium- or long-grain white rice; expect perhaps another 15-20 minutes in the stock before it is soft enough to puree, though the recipe simply says to cook until tender. Skip parboiled or converted rice, which resists breaking down.
- Rubbing through a strainerThis means forcing the cooked rice and stock through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle, the period equivalent of a food mill. A blender or immersion blender does it in seconds, though a pass through a sieve afterwards gives the silkier texture the original is after.
- StockA quart of veal, chicken or light beef stock. Rice contributes little flavour of its own, so the soup tastes largely of what you pour over it -- unsalted homemade or a good low-sodium stock, reduced if it is thin.
- SeasoningThe recipe assumes seasoned stock and adds none of its own. Salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are the period-appropriate finish; season after the liaison, since the cream mutes salt.
- ConsistencyHalf a cup of raw rice into a quart of stock gives a fairly thick purée once sieved. Thin with additional hot stock before adding the eggs if it has gone past pourable.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 quarts once the cream is in — four modest first-course servings. It does not reheat well; the liaison will separate on a second boil.