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Rice Bread
1/2 cup cold rice 1/2 cup white Indian meal 1/2 cup wheat flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 egg 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 tablespoon melted butter 1/2 cup milk Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly; add the egg beaten with the milk and melted butter. Pour into shallow greased tins and bake in a moderate oven.
A small quick bread that behaves like a cornbread with rice in it. The original assumes you know what a moderate oven is and gives no pan size or time, so the notes below fill in the blanks.
- "Cold rice"Plain cooked white rice, drained and cooled — leftovers from the day before are exactly what is meant. Break up any clumps with a fork before mixing so the grains distribute rather than sitting in lumps.
- White Indian mealIndian meal is cornmeal; the white specification means white corn, which was widely used in the South and gives a paler, milder crumb. Fine or medium grind both work; yellow cornmeal gives a more pronounced corn flavour.
- Moderate oven350°F. In a shallow pan the bread wants 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is set and lightly coloured and a tester comes out clean.
- Shallow greased tinsAn 8-inch square pan or a well-greased cast-iron skillet suits this quantity; the batter should sit no more than about an inch deep so it cooks through before the edges dry. It also divides neatly into six or seven muffin cups, which need about 18 minutes.
- Batter consistencyWith only half a cup of milk this is a thick, spoonable batter rather than a pourable one, and the rice makes it thicker still. Spread it level with a spatula; if it seems stiff enough to resist, a tablespoon or two more milk is within the spirit of the recipe.
- LeaveningOne teaspoon of baking powder for a cup of combined meal and flour is at the low end of, though broadly in line with, current practice. Make sure the powder is fresh and get the pan into the oven promptly, since the rise begins as soon as the liquid goes in.
- Yield and servingSix modest squares. It is a supper bread, meant hot with butter alongside a stew or greens, and it goes dry by the next day — reheat rather than serving cold.
- A note on the section headingThis appears under "Frozen Desserts" in the book. The placement carries no instruction about the dish: it is a plain baked bread.
Rice bread belongs to the rice-growing American South, where cooked rice was cheap, constantly on hand as a leftover, and routinely worked into batters to stretch flour and meal — the Carolina Lowcountry produced a whole family of such breads, from rice waffles to the soft spoonbread-like "rice bread" of Charleston kitchens. The combination here, cornmeal plus wheat flour plus a starchy third element, follows what is often described as a common nineteenth-century quick-bread pattern, and the presence of baking powder rather than saleratus and sour milk suggests a recipe from after commercial baking powders became household staples in the later 1800s. Its appearance in a loose-leaf collection like Mrs. Fryer's is itself telling: those books were sold as expandable binders so a cook could add and reorder pages.