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Rice and Cheese Fritters
Put 1 cupful of cold boiled rice in a colander and stand over boiling water until soft enough to break readily with a fork. Add to it 1/2 of a cupful of grated mild cheese, 3 tablespoonfuls of milk, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and 1 scant teaspoonful of baking-powder. Have ready a small saucepan partly filled with smoking hot fat.
Drop in 1/2 teaspoonful as a tester; if it holds its shape the batter is all right; if it spreads and absorbs the fat, add a little more flour. Cook by small spoonfuls-two or three at a time; after cooking each lot give the fat a few minutes in which to regain its first heat. Drain the fritters on soft paper, and keep hot until all are cooked.
A leftover-rice fritter of the frugal-cookery school, and the whole thing turns on batter consistency rather than technique. The test-spoonful step is the recipe's own quality control and should not be skipped.
- The hinge: the testerFry a half-teaspoon of batter before committing. If it flattens and drinks fat, work in a little more flour until a dropped spoonful holds a rough dome. Rice varies in residual moisture, which may be why the original gives a test rather than a fixed flour quantity.
- Fat temperature"Smoking hot fat" in a period lard-and-drippings kitchen probably corresponds to something in the region of 360-375F, though the book gives no figure. Use a thermometer; much below 350F the fritters absorb fat, and too hot and the outsides colour before the interior sets. The instruction to pause between batches is about recovering that heat.
- Steaming the riceThe colander-over-boiling-water step softens cold rice so it binds. The recipe gives no time; go by the test it does give, that the grains should mash under a fork without becoming paste.
- Mild cheeseIn American usage of this period this most likely meant a young factory Cheddar. A mild yellow Cheddar or a young Monterey Jack works; avoid aged cheese, which weeps oil into the fat, and pre-shredded blends, whose anti-caking starch stiffens the batter unpredictably.
- Baking powderA "scant teaspoonful" is a little under a level teaspoon. Modern double-acting powder behaves differently from much of what was sold then, so do not round it up, and fry soon after mixing.
- Depth of fatA small saucepan partly filled suggests perhaps an inch and a half to two inches, enough for the fritters to float and turn. Two or three at a time is, as the recipe says, the limit in a small pan.
- Draining"Soft paper" would have been something like unglazed brown paper. Use paper towels, and set them on a rack so the undersides do not sit in fat.
- Yield and servingThe quantities make a good many small fritters, enough for two as a supper dish or four alongside soup or greens. They are best straight from the pan; holding them warm on a rack in a low oven buys a little time before they soften.
Rice fritters belong to the large family of leftover dishes that carried American frugal cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when boiled rice was a cheap staple and cold rice from yesterday's dinner was assumed to be sitting in the larder. Cheese does the work of meat here, a common substitution in economy cookery of the period and one that reflects the growing availability of inexpensive factory-made Cheddar. The care taken over frying fat, testing its heat, letting it recover, straining nothing away, is characteristic too: fat was bought or rendered and reused, and a batch of fritters that soaked it up was a real loss.