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Consomme with Rice
Follow the directions for consomme with Larkin Tapioca, substituting the rice for the tapioca.
A one-line variation that assumes you have already turned back to the tapioca recipe. The substitution is not quite one-for-one, and the difference matters if you want the broth to stay clear.
- Larkin TapiocaA house-brand tapioca sold by the Larkin Company, whose mail-order product line this book helped promote. Any ordinary tapioca stands in for it; the brand name carries no special property.
- How much riceThe original gives no quantity because the tapioca recipe held it. For clear soup, figure 2 to 3 tablespoons of raw long-grain or Carolina-style rice per quart of consommé — enough to give body to each spoonful without turning the broth into a porridge.
- Cook the rice separatelyRice sheds starch and can cloud a consommé you have taken trouble to clarify (tapioca turns translucent, though it thickens too). If you want maximum clarity, boil or steam the rice in salted water, rinse briefly, and add it to the hot consommé at the last moment.
- TimingWhite rice needs 15 to 18 minutes in water. Do not let it sit and swell in the finished soup — it keeps absorbing liquid and goes soft and swollen within half an hour of service.
- Consommé, not stockA period consommé means broth clarified with egg white and lean minced meat, then strained through a cloth. If you are using ordinary stock, expect a cloudy soup and season more assertively, since consommé is concentrated as well as clear.
- ServingRoughly a cup per person as a first course, in a shallow soup plate or a two-handled cup. Salt is judged after the rice goes in, not before.
Good Things to Eat belongs to a genre now largely forgotten: the cookbook issued by a mail-order grocery house, in this case the Larkin Company of Buffalo, whose "Larkin Clubs" sold soap, groceries and furniture premiums directly to housewives. Recipes calling for Larkin Tapioca by name were advertising as much as instruction. The dish itself is unremarkable and deliberately so — clear soup garnished with a single starch was the standard opening of a formal meal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and French kitchen practice gave each garnish its own name, consommé au riz among them. That a household booklet could print a recipe consisting of one sentence of cross-reference says something about how thoroughly the pattern was understood: make the clear soup, then choose what floats in it.