“On the back of the stove was a pot half filled with a mixture of boiled rice and prunes. In the oven was some soggy bread, and on the hearth some cold bacon. A can half filled with pale brown coffee added the finishing touch to a layout perfectly familiar to me. I thanked the cook and proceeded to dish out some of the rice whose grayish color aroused Zulime's distrust. She refused to even taste it. "It looks as if it were filled with dirt--or ashes."”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1720. INGREDIENTS.--To every lb. of rice allow 4 lbs. of wheat flour, nearly 3 tablespoonfuls of yeast, 1/4 oz. of salt. _Mode_.--Boil the rice in water until it is quite tender; pour off the water, and put the rice, before it is cold, to the flour. Mix these well together with the yeast, salt, and sufficient warm water to make the whole into a smooth dough; let it rise by the side of the fire, then form it into loaves, and bake them from 1-1/2 to 2 hours, according to their size. If the rice is boiled in milk instead of water, it makes very delicious bread or cakes. When boiled in this manner, it may be mixed with the flour without straining the liquid from it. _Time_.--1-1/2 to 2 hours.
Sources: The passage is from Hamlin Garland, A Daughter of the Middle Border, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, boar stamp.