Home › Meat Substitutes › Mushroom and Rice Mold
Mushroom and Rice Mold
1 teacup of rice 1 1/2 pounds mushrooms A little chopped onion 1/2 pint white sauce 2 ounces butter Pepper, salt 3 gills water Wash a teacup of rice, and boil it in a saucepan with the water until all is absorbed. Chop the mushrooms and fry them in the butter with the onion and seasoning for five minutes, then cover and cook until tender. Strain the mushrooms and mix two-thirds of them with one-third of the white sauce. Butter a mold and put in a layer of rice, then mushrooms; fill the mold in this way, having the rice last. Press the mixture in well, cover with buttered paper and steam one hour. Mix the rest of the mushrooms with the liquid strained from them and the rest of the white sauce. Serve around the rice turned from the mold.
A steamed rice timbale layered with buttered mushrooms, from the era when a molded dish stood in for a roast. The proportions work, but the volume measures need translating before you start.
- Teacup and gillsA teacup in books of this period is not standardised; it is variously given as anything from a gill (5 fl oz) to about 6 fl oz (3/4 cup). Three gills is 1 1/2 cups if the book is American, 15 fl oz if British imperial — the difference matters here, so start with about 1 1/2 cups water to 3/4 cup rice and add a little more if the grains are still firm when the pan goes dry.
- White sauceHalf a pint means 1 cup of medium bechamel (10 fl oz if the book is British): 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, seasoned. One third goes into the mushrooms for the layers, the rest into the sauce served around the turned-out mold.
- Rice choiceUse a medium- or short-grain white rice. Long-grain and parboiled rice will not knit together, and the mold will collapse into a heap when you invert it.
- The hinge: press and steam properlyThe mold holds only because the layers are compacted. Press each layer down firmly with the back of a spoon, finish with rice, and keep the steam gentle for the full hour so the starch sets. Let it stand five minutes off the heat before turning out.
- Buttered paperParchment cut to fit, buttered side down, then foil or a lid over it. Its job is to keep condensation off the top layer, which would otherwise turn the rice sloppy.
- Mushroom liquidDo not discard what you strain off — it is the seasoning for the sauce. If it is thin, reduce it by half before whisking it into the remaining white sauce.
- Mushroom quantityA pound and a half of mushrooms cooks down to a surprisingly small amount, which is why the recipe calls for so many. Cremini give more flavor than white buttons; five minutes of frying then a covered cook of 10-15 minutes is what "until tender" means.
- YieldFills roughly a 1-quart mold or pudding basin; serves about four as a light main course, six as a side.
Meatless cookbooks proliferated on both sides of the Atlantic, and among vegetarians and Lenten cooks there was a need for a dish with the ceremonial shape of a joint. The molded entree answered that need: steamed in a tin, turned out whole, and ringed with sauce, it could be brought to table like a roast. Mushrooms were one substitute for the missing meat, prized for the savory depth we would now credit to glutamates, and the technique here — a layered, steamed farinaceous mold — is the same one behind the rice and macaroni timbales that fill the entremets chapters of Victorian and Edwardian household manuals.