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Rice with Eggs
Boil some rice till it will press closely together. Fill some teacups with it, pressing the rice well down; then leave a hole in the middle and pour into each hole a small raw egg, yolk, and white. Set the tea-cups to cook in the oven, and when the eggs are just set and no more, press on them some more rice. Turn them out of the teacups, and if you have rubbed the inside of the cups with a little butter this will be easy, and sprinkle over the top of each mold plenty of chopped parsley. Do not forget salt and pepper to season the ingredients.
A molded rice-and-egg dish built in teacups, from the lean-years section of a wartime Belgian collection. It works, but the whole thing hinges on the egg being set enough to hold together and not a minute more.
- The hinge: the eggPull the cups the moment the white is opaque and the yolk still trembles. The recipe gives no time; expect somewhere in the region of 10-15 minutes in a moderate oven, and start checking early. Carried further, the yolk chalks and the mold weeps liquid as it unmolds.
- TeacupsA teacup of the period is usually reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz, so small ramekins or ovenproof custard cups are the nearest substitute. Anything much wider makes a shallow disc that will not turn out cleanly.
- "Set the tea-cups to cook in the oven"No temperature is given; a moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading. Standing the cups in a roasting pan with an inch of hot water is not in the original but gives gentler, more even setting and reduces the chance of overcooking the base.
- The rice"Till it will press closely together" means cooked well past al dente and starchy — a short or medium grain simmered in plenty of water until sticky. A dry long grain such as basmati binds poorly and the molds are far more likely to break up.
- A small raw eggEggs of the period were ungraded and generally smaller than a modern large egg, which runs about 2 oz in the shell and may overflow the well. Use medium eggs, or break the egg into a cup and slip in only as much as the hollow takes.
- SeasoningSeason the rice itself while it is still warm, and salt the egg as it goes in. Salt added only at the table sits on the parsley and never reaches the interior.
- UnmoldingButter the cups generously before the first spoonful of rice, and let the molds stand two or three minutes out of the oven before turning out — they firm up and release far more willingly.
- YieldOne mold per cup; figure two per person as a light supper dish, or one alongside a soup or braise.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled during the First World War from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees in England, and it was published in aid of Belgian relief; the dishes themselves reflect a cuisine under pressure. That context explains a recipe like this one, which stretches a single egg into a whole course with boiled rice and a handful of parsley, and asks for nothing beyond butter, salt and pepper. Molding starchy food in cups and turning it out was a familiar domestic trick — a way of making plain ingredients look composed without a mold, a pastry crust or a sauce to hide behind. Parsley does double duty here, as garnish and as seasoning.