“After their audience, they dined with the minister, not exactly in the manner of Downing Street, nor even with the comparative luxury of Canobia; but the meal was an incident, and therefore agreeable. A good pilaff was more acceptable than some partridges dressed with oil and honey: but all Easterns are temperate, and travel teaches abstinence to the Franks. Neither Fakredeen nor Tancred were men who criticised a meal: bread, rice, and coffee, a bird or a fish, easily satisfied them. The Emir affected the Moslem when the minister offered him the wine of the mountains, which was harsh and rough after the delicious Vino d’Oro of Lebanon; but Tancred contrived to drink the health of Queen Astarte without any wry expression of countenance.”
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 Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred, 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 — slate cloth, beehive stamp.