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Boiled Rice with Apricots
Wash well a scant teacupful of rice, place it in a saucepan with as much milk as it will absorb and loaf-sugar to taste, and boil the whole gently until tender. When cooked, flavor slightly with essence of vanilla, move the rice away from the fire, and let it cool. Place the beaten yolks of four eggs in a stewpan with one teacupful of milk, stir them over the fire until thickened but not boiling, and leave until cold. When the custard and rice are both cold, mix them well together. Whip one-fourth pint of cream to a firm froth, having previously sweetened it with powdered sugar, and mix with it one-half ounce of isinglass that has been dissolved in a small quantity of warm water. Stir the cream in lightly with the rice, put the mixture into a mould, and pack it in ice. Cut up some apricots (canned ones will answer), into halves, remove the stones, put them in a stewpan, cover them with syrup, and allow them to simmer gently until tender. Drain the apricots and keep them in a cool place. When ready to serve, dip the mould quickly into hot water, wipe it, turn the rice onto a glass dish, and arrange the apricots round it.
A cold moulded rice cream — essentially a rice pudding lightened with custard and whipped cream, set with fish gelatin and ringed with poached apricots. The hinge is temperature discipline: every component must be fully cold before it meets the next, or the cream deflates and the gelatin sets in strings.
- TeacupfulTeacup measures in this period were not standardised; a teacupful is often reckoned at about 6 fl oz rather than a full 8. On that basis a "scant teacupful" of rice is roughly 3/4 cup dry short-grain, and the custard's teacupful of milk about 3/4 cup.
- IsinglassIsinglass is clarified collagen from fish swim bladders, widely used as a setting agent for cold creams. Powdered gelatin replaces it, but not gram for gram, and the equivalent quantity is not settled; it is best arrived at by trial. Bloom it in cool water first, then warm it to dissolve.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a cone and broken off in lumps; ordinary granulated is the equivalent. The "powdered sugar" for the cream means finely ground sugar, not necessarily today's cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar, though that works and helps stabilize the whip.
- One-fourth pint of creamHalf a cup, measured before whipping. Use heavy cream; anything lighter will not hold a firm froth alongside the gelatin.
- The custardFour yolks in 3/4 cup milk, stirred until thickened but not boiling, means 170-180F. Above that the yolks scramble. Take it off the heat while it still coats a spoon thinly and strain it as you pour it out.
- Adding the gelatinDissolved gelatin stirred into cold whipped cream will seize into threads. Have it warm but not hot, and add it to the cream in a thin stream while whisking, then fold the cream into the rice at once and mould immediately.
- Packing in iceThe original says only to pack the mould in ice; period practice generally meant a pail of crushed ice, often with salt added. Four hours in the refrigerator does the same work; a metal mould unmoulds more cleanly than glass or ceramic.
- ApricotsCanned apricot halves are already tender — a minute or two in their own syrup to warm them through is enough. Fresh halves need five to eight minutes in light syrup. Chill them fully; warm fruit against a cold cream is unpleasant.
- YieldServes six to eight from a 1-quart mould.
Moulded rice creams of this kind were a common feature of the dessert chapter in late-Victorian kitchen manuals, and are usually related to the French riz à l'impératrice — rice cooked in milk, bound with custard and gelatin, lightened with cream, and turned out cold. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name fronts this 1896 book, was cataloguing the working repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen, where a dish that could be built the morning before and unmoulded on demand was worth more than one requiring last-minute attention. The casual permission that "canned ones will answer" for the apricots marks the period precisely: commercial canning had by the 1890s made out-of-season stone fruit an acceptable substitute even in a hotel kitchen. Isinglass, the setting agent here, was already being displaced by sheet and powdered gelatin, and would largely vanish from domestic cookery within a generation, surviving mainly as a fining agent in brewing.