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Rice Crown with Apricots
Cook rice in milk and put in a buttered ring mold. When cool, turn into a fruit-dish. Cook dried apricots and place halves around the top of the crown. Strain the remainder of the fruit through a fine sieve and pour into the hollow of the crown. If this dish is desired hot, put the mold in the oven for a few minutes before trimming it with the apricots.
A skeleton recipe of the kind French cookery books assumed a cook could flesh out: no quantities, no times, and no oven temperature. The points below fill in what the original leaves to experience.
- The hinge: cook the rice until it is stickyThe crown holds its shape only because the starch from the rice sets into a paste as it cools. Use a short or medium grain rice, simmer it in the milk until the grains are soft and the mixture is thick enough to mound on a spoon, and do not rinse the rice first or drain it after.
- Proportions, since none are givenA workable ratio is about 1 cup of rice to 4 cups of whole milk, which fills a 1-quart ring mold. Sweeten it — the original does not say to, but a rice crown intended for a fruit dish would have carried sugar, roughly 1/3 cup, plus vanilla or a strip of lemon peel.
- "Cook rice in milk" means slowlyMilk scorches on the bottom of the pan long before the rice is done. Use a heavy saucepan over low heat, stir often, and allow 30 to 40 minutes. Baking it covered at 325F is the safer route if the stovetop demands too much attention.
- Buttering the moldButter the ring generously and chill it before filling; a warm greased mold releases unevenly. Press the rice in firmly to eliminate air pockets, then refrigerate at least three hours before turning out. The original's "when cool" means thoroughly cold and set.
- Dried apricotsModern dried apricots are often sulfured and soft enough to poach in 20 to 25 minutes; harder, older-style dried fruit may need soaking first. Cook them in water with a little sugar until tender but still holding their shape, and reserve the poaching syrup.
- The sieved puréeStraining the remaining fruit through a fine sieve gives a thick apricot sauce. Loosen it with the poaching liquid until it pours; a stiff purée sitting in the hollow reads as a mistake rather than a sauce.
- Serving it hot'A few minutes in the oven' is just that: a short warming, with the mold still filled, to take the chill off before unmolding. The recipe names no temperature, so a moderate oven is the safe assumption. It will not reheat evenly beyond that, and a hot rice crown is more fragile than a cold one.
- YieldA 1-quart ring serves six to eight as a dessert.
Rice cooked in sweetened milk and molded into a ring belongs to the French riz au lait family of desserts — riz au lait pressed into a couronne and filled with fruit, a form that appears under various names in the classic French repertoire depending on what went into the hollow. French terminology carried real social weight in American dining rooms of the period; the appeal was that a mold, a cup of rice and a box of dried apricots could produce something that looked like restaurant work. Dried apricots are the telling detail: cheap, shelf-stable, and available year-round when fresh ones were a brief seasonal luxury, they let a cook produce a fruit dessert in February.