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Rice Cones
Put one cup of rice in a double boiler with one pint of milk and cook until all the milk is absorbed and the rice becomes a stiff paste. Season with paprika, salt, a few drops of onion juice, and mold into cones. Fry in deep oil or vegetable fat a golden brown and serve with a teaspoon of currant jelly on the top of each.
A rice croquette in cone form, held together by nothing but starch. Everything depends on cooking the rice down far enough and chilling it hard before it meets hot fat.
- The hinge: chill before fryingWarm rice paste will slump or burst in the fat. Mold the cones, set them on a tray, and refrigerate at least an hour until firm and dry to the touch. A dip in beaten egg and fine crumbs is not in the original but makes the cones far more forgiving.
- Rice choiceUse a short or medium grain white rice — the starchier the better, since starch is the only binder here. Long grain basmati or converted rice will not paste up and the cones will crumble.
- One pint of milkTwo cups of milk to one cup of raw rice is a tight ratio. Expect 45 minutes to an hour in a double boiler, and add a splash more hot milk if the grains are still chalky when the liquid is gone. Stir occasionally so the bottom does not scorch.
- Onion juiceA period shortcut: grate an onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze it in cheesecloth. The recipe calls for only a few drops, so start there and taste before adding more.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; 'deep oil or vegetable fat' would today be read as the usual deep-frying range, around 365-375F. Cooler and the cones drink fat and soften; hotter and the outside colors before the inside warms through. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Vegetable fatAt the time this would have meant a vegetable shortening or cottonseed-type oil rather than butter or lard. Any neutral high-smoke-point oil does the same job.
- Yield and servingOne cup of raw rice should make something like eight cones of two or three inches, enough for a light main dish for three or four with a vegetable alongside. The currant jelly carries most of the sweet-tart contrast, so it is worth including.
Meatless Cookery belongs to the American literature of meatless and meat-substitute cooking, filling its "meat substitutes" chapters with dishes built from rice, beans, nuts, cheese and eggs. Rice cones are a croquette by another name — the same technique of binding a cooked starch, shaping it, and deep-frying it that French cookery had long applied to potato and rice — reshaped into cones purely for the look of the plate. The currant jelly on top is the giveaway that this was meant to stand in for a meat course: sweet-tart jelly was the conventional accompaniment to game, lamb and veal in nineteenth-century American service, so putting it on fried rice borrowed the flavor cue of a roast without the roast.