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Boiled Rice
Wash thoroughly about twelve ounces of rice, using several waters, tie it up in a cloth, allowing plenty of room for it to swell. Put it into a saucepan of cold water and boil for about two hours. Turn it out onto a dish, and serve with some jam or sweet sauce.
A Victorian-British method that reached the Waldorf's kitchen almost unchanged: rice boiled inside a cloth so it swells into a solid mould, then turned out and eaten as a sweet. The one thing to change is the time.
- Two hours is far too longTwelve ounces of rice tied loosely in cloth will be fully cooked and swollen in 25 to 35 minutes of steady simmering, depending on the grain. Two hours produces paste. Check by pinching a grain through the cloth from about the 25-minute mark.
- Twelve ounces of riceThat is about 1 3/4 cups uncooked, which will yield roughly 5 to 6 cups cooked, enough for six to eight as a dessert. Long-grain will hold its shape best; short-grain or pudding rice will bind into a firmer mould.
- The clothA large square of well-washed cotton or a double layer of cheesecloth, scalded and wrung out. Tie it so the rice occupies less than half the bag; the grains roughly triple in volume and a tight tie splits the cloth or gives you a hard core.
- Keep it off the bottomThe bag will scorch where it rests on the hot metal. Suspend it from the pan handle, or lay a saucer or trivet in the bottom of the pan, and keep the water at a bare rolling boil with the rice well covered.
- Why wash in several watersRinsing until the water runs clear removes surface starch, which is what keeps a boiled cloth pudding from turning to glue. This step is not optional here, as there is no draining afterwards.
- Turning it outLift the bag, let it drain a minute, untie and invert onto a warmed dish. It comes out as a rough dome. Serve at once, while hot, since it stiffens as it cools.
- Sweet sauceThe period default would be a thin custard, a jam sauce loosened with hot water, or melted butter with sugar and nutmeg. Any warm fruit preserve thinned to pouring consistency does the job.
Boiling a pudding in a cloth rather than a basin is an English technique documented from the seventeenth century onward, and it survived into hotel kitchens because it needs no oven and no special mould — only a pot of water and a rag. Plain boiled rice served with jam was standard nursery and boarding-house fare in Britain through the nineteenth century. It also appears in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection: the book is a working reference for a large American hotel kitchen, and it records the dull staples alongside the terrapin and the canvasback duck.