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Rice a la Conde
Simmer the rice in milk till it is tender, sweeten it, and add, for a medium-sized mold, the yolks of two eggs. Let it thicken a little, and stir in pieces of pineapple. Pour it into a mold, and let it cool. Turn it out when it has well set, and decorate with crystallized fruits. Pour round it a thin apricot syrup.
Pains Perdus (Lost bread) Make a mixture of milk and raw eggs, enough to soak up in six rusks. Flavor it with a little mace or cinnamon. Put some butter in a pan and put the rusks in it to fry. Let them color a good brown, and serve them hot with sugar dusted over them.
Two dishes run together here: a molded rice pudding turned out and glazed, and a rusk version of French toast. Neither gives quantities, so both need judgment from the cook.
- No quantities givenAs a workable reconstruction for a medium mold, roughly 3/4 cup short-grain rice simmered slowly in 3 cups whole milk with 1/3 cup sugar, thickened with two yolks. Short-grain rice releases more starch and holds the shape better than long-grain.
- Use canned pineapple, not freshUse canned or cooked pineapple rather than fresh. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that breaks down the egg protein and can leave the mold slack or weeping; canning or cooking heats the fruit enough to destroy the enzyme. Bromelain does not act on starch.
- Thickening the yolksAdd the yolks off the direct heat, stirring, and return to low heat only until the mixture coats a spoon. Above about 180F the yolks curdle and the pudding turns grainy.
- RusksBelgian and Dutch beschuit are dry, twice-baked round biscuits, a supermarket staple in those countries. Ordinary zwieback or a thick slice of stale white bread stands in; rusks soak fast and break easily, so dip briefly and lift with a slotted spatula.
- Crystallized fruitsThese are candied glacé fruits: cherries, angelica, citron peel. Sold in the baking aisle at Christmas, otherwise from a confectioner.
- Thin apricot syrupApricot jam warmed with a little water and sieved. It should pour like cream and pool around the base, not coat the mold.
- UnmoldingChill at least four hours. Rinse the mold in cold water before filling, or oil it lightly, and dip the outside briefly in hot water before turning out.
- YieldThe rice mold serves six; the six rusks serve two or three at breakfast.
Riz à la Condé is a fixture of classical French pastry work, the name traditionally attached to the princely house of Condé, as with a good many nineteenth-century dishes given aristocratic labels by restaurant kitchens. The formula is standard: rice cooked soft in sweetened milk, bound with yolks, set in a mold, and finished with an apricot glaze and candied fruit, which is why the recipe as printed here assumes a cook who already knows the proportions. Pain perdu, "lost bread," is the older and humbler thing: stale bread reclaimed with egg and milk, known across France and the Low Countries long before it was called French toast in English. Making it with rusks rather than bread is common in Belgium and the Netherlands, beschuit being a pantry staple in those households.