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Rice
Wash well one cup rice. Have two quarts of water boiling. Put in grains slowly, so as not to stop the boiling. Stir with a wooden spoon to prevent rice sticking to bottom of vessel. Cook 25 minutes or until grains are tender. Drain, sprinkle with salt and put in oven to dry. If to be served at table season with butter. Rice prepared as above, add 1 cup rich milk or cream and 1 tablespoon butter. Set dish or vessel over hot water and let season. Cook rice, put layer into shallow pan, sprinkle with grated cheese, another layer of rice and cheese. Season with butter, pepper and salt and bake long enough to melt cheese.
Three preparations sit in this entry: rice boiled in abundant water, the same rice enriched with cream, and a baked rice-and-cheese layer. The method throughout is the old "pasta" style of cooking rice in far more water than it can absorb, then draining.
- The ratioOne cup of rice to two quarts of water is deliberate, not an error. The rice cooks loose in the water and is drained, so it cannot go gluey; no absorption measurement is needed.
- 25 minutes is for older milling25 minutes is a long time by modern standards -- Long-grain white rice sold today is usually tender in 12 to 15 minutes in boiling water, so start tasting grains at 12 minutes; the recipe's own 'or until grains are tender' covers this. Brown rice will still want 30 to 40.
- The drying stepAfter draining, the rice goes into the oven to drive off surface water and separate the grains. No temperature is given; a low oven for a few minutes is enough for the purpose.
- "Rich milk"Probably milk that had not been skimmed of its cream. Whole milk works, or half-and-half for something closer to the cream the recipe allows as an alternative.
- Over hot waterThe creamed version is finished in a dish set over hot water rather than on direct heat, so the milk cannot scorch. A double boiler or a metal bowl over a saucepan does the same job; the recipe simply says to let it season.
- The cheese bakeNo cheese is specified; a firm grating cheese such as aged Cheddar or Parmesan suits it. Bake at 375F for 15 to 20 minutes, only long enough to melt through, as reheated rice dries quickly.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives about three cups cooked, which serves four as a side dish or two to three as the cheese-baked main.
Mrs. Wilson wrote for American households during and just after the First World War, filling newspaper columns with instruction on stretching wheat, meat and sugar. Rice, cooked in quantity, enriched with milk or layered with cheese, could stand in for a meat course at a time when meatless and wheatless days were being urged on the public. The technique of boiling rice in a large volume of water and draining it, rather than measuring water to be absorbed, was common in English and American cookery of the period, and the final drying in the oven was a usual way of getting the separate, dry grains then considered the mark of properly boiled rice.