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Fourteenth Day: Rhoda
But after all, the back place didn't turn out to be hot enough, so after a part of the muffins were baked, the griddle was set back and the omelette took its place where the fire was best. Then the rest of the muffins were left for Rhoda to bake and send in hot, and the cooks exchanged the kitchen for the breakfast table. "This mutton-stew rather beats Rhoda," observed Mr.
Vernon as he took his second helping, "though I've nothing to say against Rhoda, in a general way. And I don't believe there's any cook out of France can get up a better dish of potatoes than that; eh, Mabel? I always said my daughters should each have a profession, and I don't know but that we shall have to make cooks of them." "Oh, papa," exclaimed Grace in high indignation, "if you're going to do that, I think we'd better not learn any more!" "Oh, I'll throw in a little music and drawing and mathematics and such things, so that you can take your choice. But still, if the worst comes to the worst, you know" "I think 'the worst' will probably be Rhoda's being sick some time or other," said Mrs. Vernon; "and then I'm sure we shall be very glad to have our little daughters take her place."
After breakfast Mrs. King beckoned Mabel aside and asked her if she wouldn't like to make something for dessert all by herself. Of course Mabel said she would, and her aunt gave her this recipe, saying it was an old one of her own mother's.
No. 188-MOTHER'S RICE PUDDING.
One cup rice, ten cups milk; bake five hours. "Why, Aunt Jane, that is the shortest receipt I ever saw," said Mabel. "That's all there is of it," answered her aunt, "except that of course any cook would know that there should be a little salt added-perhaps a teaspoonful. You must wash the rice carefully to get out any specks of dirt in it, put it into a buttered baking-dish with the milk and salt, shut the oven door and forget all about it, if your fire is steady and slow. If the fire is a quick one, the damper has to be turned so as to shut off the heat. In this long, slow process of heating, the watery part of the milk evaporates, and the rich, creamy remainder becomes so incorporated with the rice, that there is no need of butter or eggs. If you want to make it still better, throw in a cupful of raisins, not stoned, but just carefully picked over, after the pudding has been in about half an hour. You may just stir them up in it; it will do no harm." 1 1 "Any sauce with it, Aunt Jane?" " I don't care for sauce with it myself, but you may make some hard sauce from your No. 156 recipe, in case the others should wish for it. It may be made as soon as you have set in the pudding, and then left in the ice-box until dinner-time." "Won't you let me write down some more receipts, aunty?" "Oh yes, a dozen of them if you want them, and the other girls can copy them into their books afterwards. I'll give you some that you can use next winter."
No. 189-APPLE CHARLOTTE.
Butter a deep pie-dish; place a layer of buttered bread (without crust), on the bottom, then a layer of thin slices of apple, pared and cored, grate a little lemon peel on them, and squeeze on a few drops of juice, then a layer of sugar-perhaps two tablespoonfuls-and one tablespoonful of water; then begin with another layer of bread and butter, and so on until the dish is full; cover the top closely with the peel of the apples, to preserve the charlotte from burning; this can be removed when the dish is served, and a little fine sugar sprinkled over the top. Will require from three-quarters of an hour to one hour in baking.
Two recipes sit inside the story here: a five-hour baked rice pudding and a layered apple charlotte. Both were written for a coal or wood range, where heat was managed by moving pans and turning dampers rather than by setting a dial.
- The hinge: keep it lowAunt Jane's whole method depends on milk reducing slowly without boiling or scorching. No temperature is given, but a low modern oven, in the region of 275-300F, is the nearest equivalent to a "steady and slow" fire. A hotter oven risks curdling the surface and setting a skin before the rice has had time to swell.
- Oven temperature for the charlotteNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range. Three-quarters of an hour to an hour for a deep dish of apples and buttered bread suggests something around 350F in a modern oven, though this is a modern reading rather than anything the book states.
- Quantities and yieldOne cup of rice to ten cups of milk is a ten-to-one ratio, far looser than most modern rice puddings, and it works only because of the long evaporation. It makes a great deal: figure eight to ten servings, and use a baking dish of at least three quarts so the milk does not climb over the rim early on.
- Use whole milkThe recipe's logic is that the watery part evaporates and the cream stays behind. Skim or low-fat milk gives a thin, grainy pudding; whole milk is the minimum, and swapping one of the ten cups for cream moves it closer to the unhomogenised milk the recipe assumes.
- Rice typeA short or medium grain white rice gives the creamy result described. Long-grain will work but stays separate; parboiled or converted rice will not break down enough in five hours to thicken the milk.
- Raisins "not stoned"Raisins of the period were commonly seeded, which is why the instruction troubles to say they need only be picked over rather than pitted. Modern raisins are seedless; add them at the same point, about half an hour in, so they plump rather than sink and burn.
- StirringThe book allows one stir when the raisins go in. Beyond that, leave it. Repeated stirring breaks the forming skin, which is what holds the surface together and is, for many people, the point of the dish.
- Hard sauceNo. 156 is not reproduced here, but hard sauce of the period is generally creamed butter and powdered sugar, flavoured and chilled. It is served cold against the hot pudding and melts into it; keeping it refrigerated until dinner, as instructed, still applies.
- The apple peel lidCovering the top with the pared skins is a practical heat shield in an oven with no thermostat. A loose sheet of foil for the first half of the baking does the same job, removed at the end to let the top colour.
- What the charlotte actually isThere is no mould, no ladyfingers and no unmoulding here: it is baked and served from the dish. Cut the bread thin, butter it generously, and slice the apples thin enough that they collapse in the hour given, or the layers will stay dry and separate.
Six Little Cooks belongs to a genre of late nineteenth-century children's cookery books in which instruction is wrapped in domestic fiction, and this page shows why the form was useful: the recipes arrive in conversation, complete with the reasoning a cookbook usually leaves out. Mrs. Vernon's remark that the girls should be able to take Rhoda's place if the cook falls sick is the honest justification for the whole exercise; well-off households of the period kept staff, but the mistress was still expected to know what happened in her kitchen. The rice pudding itself is the plainest kind of English nursery pudding, made without eggs or butter because five hours of low heat does the enriching, and its brevity as a receipt is a period marker in its own right, written for a cook who already knew what a pudding was. The apple dish is a charlotte in the older, looser sense of the word, a buttered-bread and fruit pudding baked in a deep dish rather than the moulded charlotte russe, a dish of earlier nineteenth-century origin generally traced to Carême; the trick of capping the top with the apple peelings is the sort of range-cookery economy that vanished with thermostats.