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Rice Bavarin
Put into a double boiler one and one-half pints of milk and a few thin cuts of lemon peel. When it boils stir in one-half cup of well-washed rice and a saltspoon of salt. Cook until the rice is perfectly tender. The milk should be nearly boiled away, leaving the rice very moist. Then add or mix in carefully a half-cup of sugar and a quarter of a box of gelatine which has soaked in half a cup of cold water for an hour and then been melted by placing the cup containing it in hot water for a few minutes. When the mixture is partly cooled add three tablespoons of sherry or any preferred flavor. When it is beginning to set, stir in lightly, half a pint of cream which has been whipped stiff, and put into a mold. Serve with crushed strawberries sweetened. The white mold with red sauce makes a charming combination.
A rice-based Bavarian cream: cooked rice pudding lightened with gelatine and whipped cream, then unmolded. The two things that decide whether it works are the gelatine measurement and the moment you fold in the cream.
- Gelatine: a quarter of a boxBoxed granulated gelatine of this period was commonly sold in a 1-oz box, so a quarter box works out to roughly 1/4 oz, about one modern 1/4-oz (7 g) envelope, or some 2 1/4 teaspoons; box sizes varied by brand, so treat this as an approximation. Soften it in the half cup of cold water, then warm the cup in hot water until clear rather than boiling it.
- MeasuresOne and one-half pints of milk is 3 cups. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon. Half a pint of cream is 1 cup, which whips to about 2 cups.
- Which riceUse a short- or medium-grain rice (Arborio, Carolina-style pudding rice). Long-grain and parboiled rice stay separate and give a grainy, watery mold instead of a creamy one. Rinsing is still worth doing here only to remove surface dust; the starch that clouds the milk is what thickens the pudding.
- Cooking the riceIn a double boiler this takes 45 minutes to an hour. Stir occasionally and stop while the grains are soft and the mixture still slumps; if the milk fully cooks away the finished cream will be stiff and pasty.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentChill the sweetened rice until it is thickened and just beginning to set at the edges, then fold in the whipped cream. Too warm and the cream deflates and the rice sinks to the bottom in a layer; too cold and the mixture sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
- Lemon peelPare it in wide strips with no white pith and fish the strips out before adding sugar and gelatine. Zest grated into the milk cannot be removed and leaves a gritty texture in a smooth cold dessert.
- Molding and unmoldingRinse a 1 1/2-quart mold with cold water, or oil it lightly, and chill at least 4 hours or overnight. Dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a cold plate.
- Yield and sauceServes 6 to 8. For the sauce, crush about a pint of strawberries with 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar and let them stand half an hour to draw the juice.
"Bavarin" here is the English kitchen's variable spelling of bavarois or Bavarian cream, the nineteenth-century cold dessert built on a custard or pur ed base set with gelatine or isinglass and lightened with whipped cream; the connection to Bavaria itself is traditional and never well documented. Rice versions belonged to a family of thrifty molded puddings that let a household stretch a small amount of cream over many servings, and while such puddings were long made with home-prepared stock or clarified isinglass, commercially granulated gelatine sold by the box is generally credited with putting them within easier reach of ordinary cooks. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern-and-magazine publisher whose readership was middle-class housekeepers, and the closing note about the white mold with red sauce making "a charming combination" is characteristic of the period's interest in the appearance of a dish at table as much as its taste.