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Laboratory Exercises (Boiled Rice Chinese method C)
Boiled Rice (Chinese method). 1 C. Rice 2 qts. boiling water 1 T. salt 1. Pick over the rice and wash it well. 2. Add to rapidly boiling, salted water a few grains at a time so as not to stop the boiling. If the rice settles to the bottom, stir it gently with a fork or wooden spoon. Keep the grains dancing about in the water so they will not stick together. 3. Boil until grains are soft. (About 25 minutes.) Cut a grain in two; if there is no hard core in the center the rice is done. 4. Drain in colander and rinse with hot water. 5. Dry in open oven or on back of stove. Every grain should stand out plump and separate.
Steamed Rice. 1 C. rice 3 C. water or 1 C. water and 2 C. milk 1 t. salt 1. Put water in upper part of double boiler over the fire and bring to boil. 2. Pick over and wash the rice and put into the boiling water. 3. Boil five minutes, then place upper part of boiler over hot water, cover and steam from forty to fifty minutes, or until the grains are soft. 4. Uncover and allow the steam to escape.
Note. If milk is used, boil rice in one cup of water for five minutes, then add the milk and place over hot water to steam. Rice with Chopped Parsley. 1 C. rice 3 T. butter 2 rounding T. chopped parsley salt, pepper 1.
Boil rice by Chinese method. 2. Wash parsley and chop fine. 3. Add butter, salt, pepper and parsley to the hot rice and serve with meat, in the place of potatoes.
Rice with Tomato Sauce. 2 C. tomatoes 1 sliced onion 2 pepper corns 3 T. butter 3 T. flour 1 t. salt C. rice 1. Boil rice by Chinese method. 2. Cook tomato, onion, pepper, and salt together until tomato is soft, then rub through a strainer. 3. Melt butter in a sauce pan 4. Add flour and stir until smooth. 5. Place on fire and cook until it bubbles. 6. Add strained tomato and boil two minutes, stirring constantly. 7. Add boiled rice to the tomato sauce, re-heat and serve as vegetable.
Curry Sauce. 3 T. butter 1 t. salt 3/4 t. curry powder + t. pepper 2 slices onion 3 T. flour 1½ C. scalded milk 1. Brown onion in the butter.
RICE 2. Remove onion and add flour and seasonings to the butter. 3. Stir until smooth. 4. Place on fire and cook until it bubbles. 5. Add scalded milk and boil two minutes, stirring constantly. Escalloped Rice. 2 C. cooked rice dish.
1/2 C. grated cheese (2 oz.) 1 C. white sauce or tomato sauce 1/2 C. buttered crumbs 1. Put a layer of rice in the bottom of a buttered baking 2. Add a layer of white sauce, then one of grated cheese. 3. Repeat until the dish is full, then spread buttered crambs on top. 4. Bake for twenty minutes, or until the crumbs are brown and the sauce bubbles up through the crumbs.
Note. For white sauce, use 1 C. milk, 1 T. butter, 1 T. flour, 1/3 t. salt. Make the same as tomato sauce.
For buttered crumbs, use 1 T. butter to 1/2 C. crumbs. Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add crumbs, and stir until all the crumbs are coated with butter.
A teaching sequence built on one base preparation: rice boiled loose in abundant water, then dressed four different ways. The abbreviations are the domestic-science standard of the period, C. for cup, T. for tablespoon, t. for teaspoon.
- The hinge: volume of waterTwo quarts of water to one cup of rice is what makes the method work. The grains circulate freely, surface starch washes away, and nothing sticks. The pot has to be big enough for two quarts to boil hard without boiling over.
- Twenty-five minutes is too long nowTwenty-five minutes is longer than modern rice needs -- Modern long-grain white rice boiled loose is done in 12 to 15 minutes; start testing at 10 by cutting a grain, exactly as step 3 directs. Brown rice will take 30 to 40.
- Rinsing away the coatingWashing before and rinsing after both strip starch, which is the point, but enriched rice sold in the US carries its added vitamins in a surface coating that rinsing removes. Unenriched or imported rice loses nothing.
- Drying the rice"Open oven or back of stove" means a warm, dry spot with air moving. A 200F oven with the drained colander set on a sheet pan for 5 minutes does the same job.
- Steamed rice in a double boilerForty to fifty minutes over hot water suits that setup, since the heat reaching the rice is gentle. A heavy covered saucepan on the lowest burner will cook rice in 18 to 20 minutes, though with less water than the three cups called for here.
- The milk version scorches easilyThe instruction to boil in water first and add milk only for the steaming stage exists to keep milk solids off direct heat. Follow it; milk added at the start will catch and taste of scorch.
- Tomato and curry saucesBoth are ordinary roux sauces: equal tablespoons butter and flour cooked until bubbling, then liquid added and boiled two minutes to thicken. Two cups of tomatoes means canned or cooked fresh, not raw diced.
- Escalloped rice ovenNo temperature is given. Bake at 375F for the stated twenty minutes, until the crumbs brown and the sauce bubbles through.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives roughly three cups cooked, enough for four as a side dish. The escalloped version uses two cups of cooked rice, enough for two or three.
American cookery texts of the early twentieth century routinely labelled the drain-and-dry method "Chinese" or sometimes "Japanese," a loose attribution that did not describe any particular East Asian practice; the absorption method taught in most of China and Japan is closer to the "Steamed Rice" that follows it here. The prized result, every grain "plump and separate," may reflect the domestic-science movement's fondness for a visible, repeatable standard a student could be graded against, though the reasoning is a matter of inference rather than record. That is also why these appear as Laboratory Exercises: household arts was taught as a science subject, with rice a cheap and forgiving medium for practising boiling, steaming, roux sauces and gratin in a single lesson block, each dish building on the one before.