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Casserole of Rice and Meat
Boil 1 cup of rice 15 min. in 2 qts. of boiling salted water, drain and line casserole 1/2 inch deep. Chop fine one cup any kind cold meat, season with salt, pepper, celery salt and onion. Add one beaten egg, 2 tbsp. fine cracker crumbs and moisten with hot water sufficient to pack it easy in mould; cover with rice and steam 40 to 45 min. Serve with tomato sauce.
— Mrs. B. T. Northridge
A leftovers dish built as a rice-lined mould and cooked by steam rather than by dry oven heat. The rice casing is the point: it has to be packed firmly or the whole thing collapses when turned out.
- "Casserole" here is a mouldThe recipe's own wording ("pack it easy in mould") shows a shaped, rice-lined case is meant rather than a baked earthenware dish, though by this date the word was used both ways. A 1-quart pudding basin, charlotte mould or straight-sided metal bowl that fits inside a covered pot will serve; butter it well before lining.
- Steaming, not bakingSet the covered mould on a rack in a deep pot with two inches of simmering water, lid on, and keep the water at a bare simmer for the full 40-45 minutes. Cover the mould itself with buttered parchment and foil or a tied cloth so condensation does not waterlog the rice.
- The rice is deliberately underdoneThe rice is only part-cooked before moulding -- Fifteen minutes in a large volume of boiling salted water leaves rice that is cooked but still firm; it finishes in the steamer and absorbs juices from the meat. Long-grain rice holds its shape well here; a medium grain gives a wall that sticks together more readily.
- "Any kind cold meat"This is a Monday dish for Sunday's roast — beef, lamb, ham, chicken, or a mixture. A cup of chopped cooked meat is roughly 5-6 oz. Chop by hand or pulse briefly; a food processor run too long turns it to paste.
- Season the onion first"Season with... onion" means raw grated or minced onion, which will not soften much in a steamer. Sweat a couple of tablespoons in butter first unless you want the sharpness.
- Cracker crumbsSoda crackers or plain saltines, crushed fine — closer to a modern cracker meal than to breadcrumbs. Panko is too coarse; use dry unseasoned breadcrumbs if crackers are not to hand, and cut back on added salt if the crackers are salted.
- Moistening the fillingAdd the hot water a spoonful at a time. The mixture should hold together when pressed but not be sloppy — an over-wet filling steams into a loose hash and will not slice.
- Turning outLet the mould stand five minutes off the heat before inverting onto a warm platter, then cut in wedges. Yield is four modest servings; the tomato sauce is not optional, as the dish is dry without it.
Moulded rice cases like this one are often traced to a long line of nineteenth-century bordures and rice borders said to have reached American cookbooks by way of French domestic cookery, where a lining of rice, potato or forcemeat dressed up a filling of chopped leftovers into something that could be sent to table whole. Steaming rather than baking was practical in a coal- or wood-fired kitchen: a pot on the range needed no oven fired, though the water level had to be kept up. The Philathea Cook Book, like most church and society compilations of its era, gathered such recipes under contributors' names — Mrs. B. T. Northridge here — and dishes of this kind, thrifty in meat and generous in starch, were exactly what a congregation's cooks traded among themselves.