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Spanish or Savory Rice
3 qts. boiling water 1 medium onion Mrs. C. R. Galloway. 1-8 t pepper ¼ t salt 1 green pepper Little celery may be added 3 T grated cheese 2 C tomato pulp or 1 can tomato soup Cook rice in boiling salt water until grains are soft but not broken. Melt butter, brown onion, pepper and celery and put rice in the sauce pan, stirring with fork until light brown. Add tomato pulp. Season and sprinkle with cheese. Turn into pudding dish or patty shells and brown in oven.
Mrs. P. G. Osborn. 1 pkg. Elbow Spaghetti 1 large can tomatoes 1½ lbs. onions
The page has been set badly — the contributor's name sits in the middle of the ingredient list, the rice and butter quantities are missing, and the last line belongs to the recipe that follows. What survives is a workable skillet Spanish rice if you supply the gaps.
- Reading the ingredient listThe ingredients read: onion, green pepper, a little celery, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 3 tablespoons grated cheese, and 2 cups tomato pulp or one can of tomato soup. The list runs in two columns on the page, so the seasonings are easy to miss; gather them before you start browning the onion.
- Missing quantitiesNo amount of rice is given, and butter appears only in the method. Three quarts of boiling water suits roughly 1 to 1½ cups of raw long-grain rice; 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter is enough to brown the vegetables. These are reconstructions, not conversions — the original numbers are simply gone.
- Boiled, not absorbedThis is the older method: rice cooked loose in a large volume of salted water, drained, then fried. Long-grain white rice needs 12 to 15 minutes. Drain it well and let it steam dry a minute or the frying step will steam instead of brown.
- The hinge"Stirring with fork until light brown" is the whole point of the dish. Use a fork rather than a spoon so the cooked grains stay separate, and give the rice real time in the butter — the toasted flavour is what distinguishes savory rice from rice with tomato poured over it.
- Tomato pulp or tomato soupTomato pulp means fresh tomatoes peeled, seeded and crushed, or the strained contents of a can. Canned condensed tomato soup, the alternative offered, is sweeter and saltier; taste before adding the measured salt if you use it.
- Oven browningThe recipe gives no temperature, only 'brown in oven'; a hot oven, around 400F, uncovered for 10 to 15 minutes until the cheese is set and spotted, will do it. A 'pudding dish' here is any shallow baking dish; patty shells are small baked puff-pastry cases, sold frozen today.
- YieldIf you use the suggested 1½ cups of raw rice, expect roughly four servings as a luncheon dish or six as a side. It reheats well but the fried grains soften.
Church and club cookbooks of the early twentieth century often used "Spanish" for dishes built on tomato, onion and green pepper, a trio that reached American home cooking by way of Creole and Mexican-influenced kitchens rather than Spain itself; the alternative title "Savory Rice" suggests the compilers were not especially attached to the claim. Rice, a few vegetables and three tablespoons of cheese made a cheap meatless meal, and turning it into patty shells dressed it up as company food.