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Glorified Rice
Soak half a box of gelatine in half a cup of cold water. Wash half a cup of rice and sprinkle into boiling salted water. Boil till tender and dry thoroughly in a napkin. Dissolve the gelatine over hot water and cool. Whip one pint of rich cream, fold into it the gelatine, the cold rice, half a cup of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla. Pour into a mold. When ready to serve turn out of the mold and pour over it the following sauce: One-half tumbler of quince jelly melted over the fire with three tablespoons of cold water.-Mrs W. Austin Goodman.
A gelatine-set rice cream in the French mold tradition, with two places it can go wrong: gelatine at the wrong temperature and cream whipped too stiff.
- The hinge: gelatine temperatureDissolved gelatine must be barely lukewarm when it meets the cold cream — cooler than blood heat but still fluid. Too hot and it slackens the whipped cream; too cool and it sets in threads and rubbery specks that no amount of folding will smooth out.
- "Half a box of gelatine"This is genuinely ambiguous. Boxes of granulated gelatine of the period commonly held about an ounce in four papers, which would make half a box roughly two papers, or about half an ounce — in the region of 14 g, about 1½ tablespoons of modern powdered gelatine. If your source is a larger or smaller box, measure by weight rather than by fraction.
- Rich creamUse heavy whipping cream at 36% fat or above; lighter cream whips less stably and holds air poorly against the weight of rice and gelatine. Whip only to soft, drooping peaks, since folding in gelatine and rice stiffens it further.
- Cooking and drying the riceBoil the rice in plenty of salted water like pasta rather than by absorption, so it stays loose. "Dry thoroughly in a napkin" means spreading it on a clean towel to shed surface starch and steam — a rinse in cold water first helps. It must be fully cold before it touches the cream.
- Molding and chillingThe original gives no chilling time. Rinse the mold with cold water, fill, cover and refrigerate at least four hours, preferably overnight. Unmold by dipping the base briefly in warm water and inverting onto a cold platter.
- A tumbler of jellyA tumbler is a standard drinking glass of the era, roughly 8 fluid ounces, so half a tumbler is about half a cup of quince jelly. Melt it gently with the water and let it cool to warm before pouring, or it will start dissolving the pudding. Red currant or apple jelly substitutes cleanly if quince is unavailable.
- YieldServes six to eight. A pint of whipped cream plus the rice and sugar makes more than a quart, so allow a mold of about a quart and a half. It is very rich; small portions are appropriate.
"Glorified rice" is now best known as a Midwestern potluck salad of cold rice, crushed pineapple, marshmallows and whipped cream, but this earlier version belongs to a different tradition: the molded rice creams of nineteenth-century French cookery, of which riz à l'impératrice is the grand example — rice cooked soft, folded into whipped cream set with gelatine, turned out and sauced with fruit. Commercial granulated gelatine, sold from the 1890s onward, put that sort of molded dessert within reach of a household without a stockpot of calf's-foot jelly, and American community cookbooks filled up with signed contributions like this one. The quince jelly sauce dates the recipe as much as anything: quinces were a common dooryard fruit, and their high pectin made them a favored jelly fruit.