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Oil and Vinegar
Wash, blanch, and cook the rice as for curry; drain it and dry it, and let it cool. Shred the truffles finely, and put them in a stewpan with the wine and mushrooms; cover and boil for a few seconds; mix this with the rice; add the shrimps, and a dessertspoonful of chopped parsley. Prepare a dressing with three tablespoonfuls of oil, two of vinegar (best French wine), a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, and a little French or English mustard; pour this dressing over the above; mix well but carefully; dress in a heap on a deep dish or in a salad bowl. Ornament the surface with slices of hard-boiled white and yolk of egg, chopped parsley, a few small stars of truffle, etc. Serve separately, or with a dish of sliced tomatoes.
A late-Victorian rice salad written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen: the method is complete, the quantities largely are not. Treat the proportions below as a working reconstruction and taste as you go.
- Missing quantitiesOnly the dressing and the parsley are measured. For a salad serving six, about 8 oz (225 g) of raw long-grain rice, 8 oz of peeled small shrimps, 4 oz of mushrooms, one small truffle and 2-3 tablespoons of wine gives balanced results.
- "Cook the rice as for curry"That means plainly boiled in plenty of salted water, drained, rinsed if necessary and dried until the grains are separate and dry to the touch. Basmati or another long grain behaves as intended; short-grain or risotto rice will clump and defeat the salad.
- The hinge: dry rice, cool riceWet or warm rice turns the dressing milky and the salad heavy. Spread the drained rice on a tray to steam off and cool completely before anything else touches it.
- Rice safetyCooked rice left at room temperature for hours can support Bacillus cereus. Cool it quickly, spread thin, and refrigerate if it is not being dressed and served within an hour.
- The wineUnspecified; a dry white would suit, boiled only a few seconds with the truffle and mushrooms to draw out the aroma without stewing them. Let that mixture cool before it meets the rice.
- TrufflesThe book assumes fresh or preserved truffle, an ingredient supplied to well-provided kitchens of the period and priced very differently now. A tablespoon of chopped preserved truffle, or good truffle-scented mushrooms, carries the idea; truffle oil overwhelms it.
- ShrimpsProbably small boiled and picked shrimps, small enough to stay whole in the mix. Cooked cold-water prawns, chopped if large, are the practical stand-in.
- Spoon measuresA dessertspoonful is two teaspoons. The dressing as given is three parts oil to two parts vinegar, which is sharp by modern taste; three to one is nearer current practice, and the teaspoon of salt is generous for that volume.
- ServingPiled in a dome and garnished with sliced egg white and yolk, parsley and truffle cut in small stars. It is a cold first course or buffet dish, served with the tomatoes alongside.
Composed rice salads of this kind, salade de riz, belonged to the cold table of the professional kitchen, where a starchy base was made luxurious by what was scattered through it rather than by any technique. Truffle and shrimp together mark it as a dish for a household with a serious larder: truffles reached British kitchens preserved in tins and jars from France. The instruction to cook the rice "as for curry" suggests that dry, separate-grained boiled rice needed no further explanation for the book's readers.