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Strawberry Pyramid
Have cooked one pint of flaky rice. Place a layer of it on the bottom of glass serving-dish, spreading with a tablespoon of butter. Alternate this with layers of whole strawberries (sugared) until a pyramid is formed. Serve with cream.
A cold assembly rather than a cooked dish, so almost everything depends on the rice being dry and separate before you begin.
- "One pint of flaky rice"The pint is ambiguous — it most likely means a pint measure of cooked rice, which is about 2 cups, from roughly 2/3 cup of raw long-grain. If read as a pint of raw rice you would have some six cups cooked, far more than a pyramid of berries can carry.
- What "flaky" meansGrains fully separate, never sticky. Long-grain rice boiled in plenty of salted water, drained, and spread on a tray to steam dry gives this; short-grain or risotto rice will slump into paste and the pyramid will not stand.
- The butterA tablespoon spread over cool rice will only smear. Toss the butter through the rice while it is still hot so each grain is coated, then let it cool — that is what keeps the layers from massing together.
- Sugaring the berriesHull them and toss with 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar, letting them stand 20 to 30 minutes to give up syrup. The recipe calls for whole berries, so leave them whole. Draining off the syrup before layering will help keep the rice from going soggy.
- Building itThe recipe specifies only a glass serving-dish. Make each successive layer of rice and berries narrower than the one below to get the pyramid, and a spell in the cold before serving will help it hold its shape.
- The cream"Cream" here most likely means plain pouring cream, unwhipped, passed at the table rather than whipped, which would obscure the layers the dish is built to show.
- YieldServes four to six as a light dessert. It does not keep; assemble within an hour or two of serving.
Rice-and-fruit desserts of this kind were common before reliable home refrigeration, when a cold sweet was often built from what was already cooked and cooled in the kitchen. Rice was cheap and filling, and nineteenth-century domestic writers frequently paired it with fruit in puddings, moulds and layered dishes. The "pyramid" name fits a broader Victorian and Edwardian taste for dessert as architecture -- the same impulse behind towering charlottes and moulded jellies -- and the glass dish and separately served cream both suit a sweet meant to be looked at.