Rice Bread
1 pint sweet milk. 1 teacup boiled rice. 2 teacups sifted corn meal. 1/2 1/2 teacup melted butter. 3 eggs, beaten separately. 1/2 teaspoonful salt. Bake in a very hot oven, using buttered iron muffin moulds.--Mrs. S. T.
A batter bread rather than a loaf: leavened only by beaten egg whites, baked in hot iron pans so it puffs and crusts. Two things decide whether it works — the heat of the pan and how gently the whites are folded in.
- The hinge: hot buttered ironThe recipe specifies buttered iron muffin moulds but does not say to preheat them; heating the greased pans before the batter goes in is a later convention for batter breads of this type, and with no chemical leavening the crust depends heavily on how hot the pan and oven are.
- "Very hot oven"Roughly 450-500F by the usual period reckoning. Expect somewhere around 15-25 minutes for muffin-sized portions; go by well-browned tops and set centers rather than the clock.
- Teacup and pintA teacup is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though the book does not define it; on that reading the recipe is about 3/4 cup cooked rice, 1 1/2 cups cornmeal and 6 tablespoons melted butter. A pint of milk is 2 cups. If your cornmeal is coarse the batter may look thin — it should pour, not mound.
- "Eggs beaten separately"Yolks beaten into the milk-rice-meal mixture, whites whipped to soft peaks and folded in last. This is the entire leavening; fold with a spatula and stop while streaks of white are still visible.
- The cornmealThe recipe says only "sifted corn meal"; fine white water-ground meal was common in Virginia kitchens and stone-ground white meal comes closest today. Avoid self-rising cornmeal, which would add baking powder and salt the recipe does not account for.
- The ricePlain boiled rice, cooked soft and cooled; the recipe does not specify a variety. Hot rice risks setting the eggs, so let it cool, and mash it lightly into the milk so it disperses rather than sitting in lumps.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as distinct from sour milk or buttermilk. Whole milk is the right choice here.
- Yield and servingThe batter comes to roughly five cups, so expect a dozen or more depending on the size of your moulds; it can also be baked as a single skillet batter bread, in which case drop the heat and watch it rather than trusting a fixed time. Serve hot from the pan with butter; it goes leathery once cold.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like this one, belongs to a moment when Southern bread meant corn far more often than wheat. Rice breads of this type — cooked rice beaten into a meal-and-egg batter — are often said to have travelled inland from the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, where rice was the staple crop and where close relatives such as philpy and rice waffles were long-established; the rice softens the grit of the cornmeal and keeps the crumb moist. The reliance on beaten egg whites rather than saleratus or baking powder — many batter breads of the period do use the latter — suggests a kitchen equipped with heavy iron muffin pans that could be heated fierce enough to set the crust before the air beaten into the whites escaped.