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Rice Bavarian
1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon gelatine + cup cold water 3 tablespoons sherry wine 1 cup cream Cook rice in milk in double boiler until rice is tender, and milk is absorbed. Add sugar, salt, and gelatine which has been soaked in cold water and dissolved in hot water. Add flavoring, cool slightly, and add whipped cream. Mold, chill, and garnish with wine or orange jelly cut in cubes.
The ingredient list as printed has lost several lines — the rice, milk, sugar and salt all appear in the method but not in the measurements. Work from a standard rice Bavarian ratio and the timing below.
- The missing quantitiesComparable recipes of the period use about 1/3 cup rice cooked in 2 cups milk, with 1/3 cup sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt. The printed list is genuinely incomplete rather than cryptic, so treat those figures as a reconstruction and not as the book's own.
- "+ cup cold water"A mangled fraction, almost certainly 1/4 cup — the usual soaking water for a tablespoon of granulated gelatine. Soak until the grains are swollen and opaque, then dissolve in the cup of boiling water.
- Gelatine strengthA 1900s tablespoon of granulated gelatine is roughly one modern 1/4-oz envelope, though setting strength varied between brands. One envelope gives a soft, spoonable mold; use a scant one and a half if you want it to stand cleanly on a plate.
- Cooking the riceIn a double boiler this takes 45 to 60 minutes, not the 15 or 20 minutes of a direct-heat pilaf. The milk should be absorbed and the grains collapsing; anything still al dente will read as gritty once chilled.
- The hinge: fold the cream at the right momentThe recipe says only to 'cool slightly'. In practice, cool the rice mixture until it is just beginning to thicken at the edges but is still fluid. Fold whipped cream into a warm base and it deflates into a milky layer; fold it into a set base and you get lumps of jelly through the cream.
- Cream"1 cup cream" means heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks only. Stiffly whipped cream will not fold smoothly into a starchy rice base.
- Molding and chillingRinse the mold with cold water rather than oiling it. Four hours minimum in the refrigerator, better overnight; dip the mold briefly in hot water to release.
- The sherryThree tablespoons is a firm flavoring, added uncooked, so use something you would drink. Orange juice with a little grated zest is a workable substitute and matches the orange jelly garnish the recipe itself offers.
- YieldSince the rice, milk and sugar quantities are reconstructed, the yield is approximate: reckon on a mold of a quart or a little more, serving about six.
Bavarian cream — bavarois in French kitchen usage — is a cold dessert of flavored custard or purée lightened with whipped cream and held with gelatine; the connection to Bavaria itself is traditional rather than documented, and the name was already an established professional term by the mid-nineteenth century. The rice version belongs to a large family of thrifty molded puddings that stretched a small quantity of cream with a cooked starch, and it was made easier by the arrival of reliable packaged granulated gelatine, though the older methods of boiling down calves' feet or shaving sheet isinglass still appear in cookbooks of the period. It appears here because Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, and its dessert chapter is unusually long, covering a full repertoire of sweets, chocolate ones and otherwise. The cubed wine or orange jelly garnish is characteristic of the era's taste for molded desserts dressed with a second, contrasting jelly.