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Orange Meringue
Thoroughly wash and pick over one-half pound of the best rice, put it into a saucepan with plenty of water and place it over the fire. When the water boils drain it off the rice and pour in its place a quart of milk, add four ounces of crushed loaf sugar and the thinly-pared rind of one lemon and stew the rice slowly over a moderate fire until almost dry. Peel the rind off six oranges and put it into a saucepan with some thick syrup made with loaf sugar and a small quantity of water, cover and steep for twenty minutes over a slow fire. Trim off all the white pith of the oranges and remove their seeds by coring them like apples. When the rice has cooled, mix with it the beaten yolks of three eggs, put a layer of the rice on a flat dish, pile the remainder up to form a wall, place the oranges in the center and strain the syrup over. Whisk the whites of three eggs to a stiff snow with two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar and spread it over the oranges, dust a small quantity of sugar over the whole and bake for twenty minutes in a moderate oven. Serve on the same dish.
A rice-and-orange dessert built on the plate rather than in a mould, with a meringue baked over the top. The construction is the hard part; the cooking is straightforward.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in cones and broken or crushed as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, and "powdered sugar" for the meringue means finely ground sugar, closer to today's caster or superfine than to confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch.
- QuantitiesHalf a pound of rice is about 1 1/4 cups raw; four ounces of sugar is a generous 1/2 cup. Use a short or medium-grain rice, which will hold the wall shape. Long-grain stays separate and will slump.
- The initial boilBringing the rice to a boil in water and draining washes off surface starch and softens the grain so it will absorb milk evenly. Do not skip it, and do not let the rice cook through at this stage.
- Stewing in milkA quart of milk to this much rice over low heat will take 30 to 40 minutes. "Almost dry" means thick and barely fluid, since it must stand up as a wall once cooled. Stir often; the sugar makes it catch on the bottom.
- Yolks into warm riceAdd the beaten yolks only when the rice has cooled to warm, or they will scramble in threads through the pudding. The rice then finishes setting the yolks during the twenty minutes in the oven.
- The orange syrupPared rind steeped in heavy sugar syrup is essentially a quick candying; it perfumes the syrup more than it softens the peel. Strain the syrup over the fruit and discard or chop the rind as you prefer.
- Coring the orangesAfter the pith is trimmed away the whole peeled orange is cored like an apple to pull the central seeds and membrane. A narrow apple corer or a small knife works. Modern navel oranges are seedless and need only trimming.
- OvenA moderate oven is around 350 to 375F. Twenty minutes will set and lightly color the meringue; watch it after fifteen. The serving dish must be ovenproof, since the whole thing is baked and served on the same plate.
- YieldSix oranges and a quart of milk make a substantial dessert for six to eight. It is best eaten the day it is made, as the meringue weeps and the rice firms in the refrigerator.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book collects the repertoire of a large hotel kitchen at a moment when American fine dining still spoke French and English by turns, and this dish belongs to the family of nineteenth-century rice entremets: rice stewed in sweetened milk, shaped into a wall or border, and filled with fruit. It sits alongside French preparations such as *riz a l'imperatrice* and *bordure de riz*, in which the rice serves as both container and starch. Presenting the oranges whole, peeled and cored, makes a display of both fruit and knife work. The meringue lid, browned in the oven at the last moment, uses the whites left over when the yolks went into the rice.