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Turkish Pilaf
Cook one cup rice with one cup each of stock and tomato; when tender sauté in four tablespoons butter, season with salt and paprika. Serve hot on buttered toast.
A three-line recipe that assumes you already know how pilaf behaves. The proportions are sound; the vagueness is all in the tomato and the timing.
- The liquid ratioOne cup rice to two cups total liquid is right for long-grain white rice. Bring stock and tomato to a boil together, add the rice, cover, and cook 15-18 minutes over low heat until the liquid is absorbed.
- "One cup tomato"In 1907 this means canned tomato, broken up with its juice, or fresh tomato stewed and passed through a sieve. Use a cup of canned crushed tomatoes or passata. Tomato paste is far too concentrated here.
- The butter step is the pointFour tablespoons for one cup of raw rice sounds excessive but this is the hinge of the dish: the cooked, cooled-slightly rice is turned in hot butter until the grains separate and some catch and brown lightly. Use a wide skillet and do not stir it to mush.
- Rest before sautéingRice sautéed straight from the pot while steaming and soft will break down. Let it stand uncovered five minutes and fork the grains apart first.
- PaprikaSweet Hungarian paprika, not smoked and not hot; smoked Spanish paprika would have been unfamiliar in an American kitchen of this date and in any case will dominate the dish. Add it off the heat or at the very end, as it scorches and turns bitter in hot butter.
- Buttered toastA period convention for serving soft made dishes: a slice of white bread, toasted and buttered. It can be skipped without loss, though it does soak up the butter.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives about three cups cooked — two generous servings as a light main, four as the small between-course portion an "entrée" meant at the time.
"Turkish pilaf" in an American cookbook of this era is a gesture at the Ottoman table rather than a record of it. The word travels from Persian polow through Turkish pilav, and English-language cookbooks spelled it pilau, pillau, pilaff and pilaf more or less at random through the nineteenth century, generally meaning rice cooked in a seasoned broth rather than plain boiled rice. What marks this version as American and turn-of-the-century is the tomato, the paprika and the slice of buttered toast underneath — the toast being the standard period platform for anything soft served as an entrée, which then meant a small made dish placed between the fish and the roast, not the main course. Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like other manufacturer-sponsored volumes of the day it surrounded its promotional chocolate chapters with a full general cookbook, which is why a rice dish with a Turkish name turns up in a candy company's publication at all.