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Casserole of Rice and Liver
1 cup rice 1 quart water 2 tablespoons butter or other fat 1 pound lamb's or calf's liver 2 cups stock 1 teaspoon caramel 2 tablespoons browned flour 2 tablespoons fat Crumbs Salt and pepper Boil the rice in the water and mash smooth with the fat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Line a well-greased casserole with the mixture, pressing the paste firmly against bottom and sides, and leaving a large hollow in the center. Set in a cold place until firm. Meanwhile boil the liver, drain, chop fine and season with salt. Heat the soup stock, seasoned with caramel. Make a brown sauce with the fat, browned flour and soup stock, and add the minced liver. Fill the hollow in the center of the rice with the liver mixture, sprinkle with crumbs and brown in the oven.
A rice-crust pie baked in a deep dish, filled with liver in brown sauce. The success of it turns on the rice: it must be cooked to a soft paste and chilled firm before the filling goes in.
- The rice must be overcookedOne cup of rice to a quart of water gives a wet, sticky mass, which is the point — it has to mash into a paste that will hold a shape. Cook it covered until the grain breaks down, then beat in the butter while hot and press it into the dish while still warm and pliable.
- Chill it properly"Set in a cold place until firm" — a refrigerator will do; allow an hour or so. A warm rice shell slumps as soon as the hot filling is added.
- CaramelNot confectionery caramel but burnt-sugar colouring — sugar cooked to dark mahogany and let down with hot water, sold in the period as gravy browning. A teaspoon of modern browning sauce, or simply darker browned flour, does the same work.
- Browned flourFlour toasted in a dry pan or a slow oven until nut-coloured. It thickens noticeably less than raw flour, so if you brown your own, expect a looser sauce; two cups of stock to two tablespoons each fat and browned flour gives a pourable gravy rather than a thick one.
- CasseroleHere the word means the baking dish itself, deep enough to hold a lined shell and its filling. A 1½- to 2-quart round dish suits these quantities.
- Cooking the liverBoiling a whole pound of liver until done leaves it grey and grainy. Modern practice is to simmer it gently just until the centre loses its raw colour, a few minutes for sliced lamb's or calf's liver, then chop — it will cook further in the sauce and the oven.
- Oven and timeThe recipe says only "brown in the oven". A hot oven, around 400°F, uncovered, for 20 to 25 minutes will do it — until the crumbs are brown and the filling bubbling. Everything in the dish is already cooked, so you are only browning and heating through.
- YieldServes four as a main dish, six as part of a larger meal.
Rice-lined dishes of this kind belong to a long line of moulded borders — the bordure de riz of French service, where a starch paste was pressed into a mould and filled with a ragout or salpicon. American cookbooks of the earlier twentieth century took up the idea, which stretched a small quantity of meat and made a whole meal in one dish. Liver was cheap and well regarded for its iron; recipes like this one exist to make a pound of it feed a family without anyone having to face a plate of plain fried liver. The browned-flour sauce with a teaspoon of caramel for colour was common household technique of the era, when a gravy was expected to be dark and jars of toasted flour were kept in the pantry.