Home › Souffle of Rice and Apples › Souffle of Rice and Apples
Souffle of Rice and Apples
992. Steep one and a half teacupful of rice in milk, add the pulp of five good-sized apples, sweeten the whole, and put it into a dish. Then beat the whites of two eggs with two ounces of sifted lump sugar, and pour it over the rice; and, just before you put it in the oven, dust a little sugar on the top of it.
A
This is a baked rice pudding under a meringue lid rather than a true soufflé — the only aerated element is the whipped egg white on top. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to swell rice in milk and stew apples to a pulp.
- "Steep" means cookThe rice must be simmered gently in milk until swollen and tender, not merely soaked. Allow about a cup of raw rice (see the next note) to 3-4 cups milk, simmered slowly and stirred, until thick enough to hold a spoon upright; it will stiffen further in the oven.
- TeacupfulA Victorian teacupful is usually reckoned at about 5 fl oz, so one and a half teacupfuls is roughly a cup of raw rice. Use short-grain pudding rice; long-grain will not soften into the creamy mass intended.
- Pulp of five applesCook peeled, cored cooking apples (Bramley or similar) with a spoonful of water until they collapse, then beat smooth. Five good-sized apples give roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of pulp; drain off any free liquid or the base will be sloppy.
- Lump sugar, siftedLoaf sugar was crushed and sifted to give a fine sugar close to modern caster. Two ounces is about 1/4 cup — a modest quantity for two whites, which gives a soft meringue topping rather than a stiff one.
- Meringue on two whitesWhip the whites to soft peaks before adding the sugar a little at a time, then beat to a stiff gloss. Spread it to touch the edge of the dish all round so it does not shrink away from the sides.
- OvenThe original names no heat. Bake at 325-350F until the meringue is set and pale gold, roughly 20-25 minutes. Hotter than that and the sugar weeps before the interior heats through.
- Sweetening the base"Sweeten the whole" is left to taste; 2-3 tablespoons of sugar in the rice and apple is usually enough, given the sweet meringue above it. Grated lemon zest or a little cinnamon in the apple is period-appropriate and welcome.
- YieldEnough for six in a 2-quart baking dish. Serve warm; the meringue turns leathery after a night in the refrigerator.
Rice, milk and sugar baked slowly in an earthenware dish is among the older sweet puddings in the English repertoire, and by the middle of the nineteenth century cheap imported rice had made it an everyday dish in thrifty households rather than a luxury. The "soufflé" in the title reflects a mid-Victorian taste for French names and French finishes: dressing a plain nursery pudding with a whipped-white crust let a cook send up something respectable at small cost, and similar dishes appear in the period under the headings soufflé, meringue or snow. The apple pulp adds acidity to what would otherwise be a very bland dish.