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South Carolina Rice Pie
1 qt. cooked meat 1 cup rice 1 cup tomato 2 tablespoons butter 4 hard boiled eggs 1 onion 1 large potato 1 ounce fat salt pork 2 teaspoons salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper If beef or veal is used allow one-quarter fat; if mutton, trim away all fat and substitute 2 ounces of butter. The meat should be cut in shavings and lightly measured. If meat is tough add 1 pint of stock and simmer until tender; if it does not need the simmering add cold gravy freed from all fat and water enough to moisten well. Chop 1 onion, potato and pork; blanch, drain and fry gently to a light yellow; add to the meat with the seasonings; sweet herbs or spice may be added. Let it heat through, stirring carefully. Cook 1 cup of rice, season with 1 cup of stewed and strained tomatoes; add the butter and the egg sliced. Turn the hashed meat into a buttered baking dish, place the rice over top. Handle carefully so as not to crush the rice or break the egg. Cut 2 eggs in 4 pieces each and press them into the rice on top. Put a bit of butter on each slice and set in a moderate oven for half an hour. Do not let the meat get too dry.
Make chicken or rice pie in the same way, but leave out the potato; 1 cup of rich milk may be substituted for the potato.--Mrs. W. P. Ferguson, Columbus, S. C.
A cooked-meat casserole under a rice crust, of the sort built from Sunday's roast. The instructions assume you can judge moisture by eye, so the notes below fix the numbers the original leaves loose.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F. Half an hour is enough to heat through and set the top; everything in the dish is already cooked.
- A quart of cooked meatCut in shavings and lightly measured, this is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb of cooked beef, veal, mutton or chicken. Leftover roast is the intent.
- The hinge: moisture"Do not let the meat get too dry" is the whole instruction. The hash should be loose and gravy-slack going into the dish, since the rice above will absorb liquid as it bakes. If you have no gravy, use stock with a spoonful of flour-thickened butter.
- Blanching the pork and vegetablesBlanch means a brief plunge in boiling water, here to draw salt from the pork and rawness from the onion before frying. Two minutes is plenty; drain well or the fat will spit.
- RiceOne cup dry, cooked to firm separate grains and drained, not creamy. A cup of stewed strained tomato stirred through it stains it pink and seasons it; the warning to handle carefully applies to laying the rice over the meat without crushing the grains or breaking the egg.
- The four eggsTwo are sliced and folded into the rice, two are quartered and pressed into the surface with a bit of butter on each. The quarters brown slightly and give the top its look.
- Salt pork by weightOne ounce is a single thin slice, used as flavouring fat rather than as meat. Bacon works if you skip the blanching and accept the smoke.
- Fat adjustmentsWith beef or veal keep about a quarter of the measured meat as fat; with mutton trim it all and add 2 oz butter instead, since cold mutton fat tastes tallowy when reheated.
- YieldServes about six; the quantities need a baking dish of roughly 3 quarts. This is a main course.
Rice was the staple grain of the South Carolina Lowcountry from the late seventeenth century until the tidal plantations collapsed after the Civil War and the hurricanes of the 1890s, and Carolina cooks kept using it in ways the rest of the country reserved for potatoes or pastry. "Pie" here means only a dish with a top on it, an older and broader use of the word that survives in shepherd's pie; the rice does the work of a crust. The recipe is credited to a Mrs. W. P. Ferguson, whose town is printed as Columbus, S. C., possibly a compositor's slip for Columbia.