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Cereals (Put the rice in a strainer)
Put the rice in a strainer; place the strainer over a bowl nearly full of cold water; rub the rice; lift the strainer from the bowl and change the water. Repeat the process until the water in the bowl is clear. Have the two quarts of water boiling briskly; add the rice and salt gradually so as not to check the ebullition; boil twenty minutes or until soft; drain through a colander and place the colander over boiling water for ten minutes to steam. Every grain will be distinct and tender.
If desired, the rice may be brought to a boil in a little milk instead of being steamed, though in this case the grains may not remain separate.
Serve as a vegetable with butter and salt, or as a cereal with cream and sugar.
A method rather than a formula: the ingredient list lived in the headnote of the original leaf, so the amounts must be inferred. This is the old open-pot boil, which suits long-grain rice and older, starchier stock better than it suits modern converted or short-grain rice.
- Quantities are incompleteThe text names two quarts of water but never states the rice or salt. A reasonable modern reconstruction would be about one cup of long-grain rice and a teaspoon of salt to that volume of water, yielding roughly three cups cooked; the original amounts are not recoverable from this page.
- Why the washing mattersRubbing the grains under repeated changes of water removes surface starch, which is one of the reasons the finished grains stay separate; the generous water and the steaming step do the rest. Modern enriched rice sold in the US has vitamins dusted on the surface, so washing does remove some of that.
- "Ebullition"A hard, rolling boil. Adding the rice slowly keeps the water from dropping off the boil, which is what makes grains cook unevenly and stick to one another at the bottom.
- Twenty minutes is for the water it was written forTwenty minutes is for the rice it was written for -- Boiling in a large volume of water, most modern long-grain rice is done in 12 to 15 minutes. Start tasting at 12. Twenty minutes will give you soft, slightly split grains; note that the recipe itself says "twenty minutes or until soft."
- The colander steamSetting the drained colander over boiling water for ten minutes drives off surface moisture and finishes the grains. Cover it loosely with a towel or lid so steam circulates rather than condenses and drips back onto the rice.
- The milk variationThe recipe is honest about the trade-off: cooked in milk rather than steamed, the grains may not stay separate, since the starch they shed is held in the milk instead of being drained away.
- Two ways to serveButter and salt for a savory side; cream and sugar for the cereal course, both given in the recipe itself.
Boiling rice in a large volume of salted water and then drying it over steam was a standard American and British method well into the twentieth century, before the absorption method — measured water, tight lid, no draining — became the default in home kitchens. The insistence on washing until the water runs clear suggests rice that reached the cook with more loose starch and dust than a modern bag does. The heading places this among cereals rather than vegetables, though the recipe gives the buttered savory service first and the cream-and-sugar cereal service second.