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Rice Border
Arrange plain boiled rice in a circle, as for serving curry, or work it into a border-mould, as follows: Wash thoroughly in two or three waters one breakfast cupful of rice, place it in a saucepan with three breakfast cupfuls of cold water, and boil slowly for half an hour; then stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter and one tablespoonful of salt. Beat this mixture up until it is very smooth, and then add two well-beaten eggs. Stir thoroughly, place the mixture in a buttered border-mould, and stand it in the oven for a few minutes. Turn it out onto a dish and fill the center with curry, or anything else prepared for the purpose.
Rice Case or Croustade Put eight ounces of rice into a saucepan with one quart of water and one ounce of butter or fat from cooked bacon, sprinkle in salt and pepper to taste, and boil until the rice is quite tender and dry. Place it in a mortar, pound it well, form it into the shape of a ball on a baking-sheet, and then into the shape of a raised pie. Brush it over both inside and out with warmed butter, set it in the oven to color, take it out, and it is then ready for use. It may be filled with forcemeat, sausage-balls, or anything else that is desired. Rice Croquettes, Italian Style Put two breakfast cupfuls of rice into a saucepan, and boil it with milk, so that when it is done it will be soft and pasty. Meanwhile chop fine half of a cold cooked fat liver, season, put it into a basin, and mix in a third of its bulk of truffles also cut fine. Pour one breakfast cupful of bechamel sauce into a saucepan, add the trimmings of the truffles, reduce the liquor and add one teacupful of thick gravy or melted glaze; when the mixture is of a good consistency, strain it into the basin with the fat liver. Pack the basin in ice, and when the mixture is quite cold, take a little up at a time in a small spoon, roll it into a pear-shape, and cover it with the rice, taking care to see that it is firm. When they are all done, dip them into egg and breadcrumbs, fry them carefully in boiling fat, drain them, place them on a napkin, spread over a dish, garnish neatly with fried parsley, and serve. Croustades of Rice, Queen Style Wash well, and boil in a saucepan one quart of rice with two quarts of broth and one ounce of butter. Keep it as dry as possible, so that it remain firm, and add to it one ounce of grated Parmesan cheese, one teaspoonful of pepper, and one-third teaspoonful of grated nutmeg. Stir well with a wooden spoon, and then put in a buttered sautepan, spreading it about two inches thick, and covering it with a piece of buttered paper. Leave it to cool, with a weight pressed down on the top. Then cut it out with a paste-cutter into half a dozen croustades (being careful to dip the cutter into warm water each time it is used), and with a smaller paste-cutter, make a mark on the surface of each without cutting. Dip the pieces in beaten egg, roll them in breadcrumbs, and repeat this operation; then fry them in very hot lard for five minutes, drain, empty them with a vegetable spoon, and fill the insides with a hot salpicon of shrimps, mushrooms and cream sauce. Place the covers on the top, and serve on a dish covered with a folded napkin.
Four related preparations, all built on the same idea: rice cooked stiff enough to hold a shape and used as an edible vessel. A few of the measurements need adjusting before you start.
- The salt is wrongOne tablespoonful of salt to a single cup of rice is around three times what the dish can carry. Use a scant teaspoon of fine salt and correct at the end.
- Breakfast cupfulTreat it as 8 fl oz. Some period books stretch it to 10 oz, but the 1:3 rice-to-water ratio here works at a straight cup.
- Rice typeFor the border and croustades you want something starchier -- a medium grain or Arborio -- since the whole structure depends on the grains binding. Note that this cuts against the text's own instruction to wash the rice in two or three waters: if you are moulding it, the surface starch is the glue.
- "Stand it in the oven for a few minutes"The text gives neither heat nor time. A moderate oven (around 350F) will do, and the bare few minutes is likely short: the eggs need to set or the ring collapses when turned out. Standing the mould in a shallow pan of hot water helps, though the recipe does not say to. Let it rest before unmoulding.
- Fat liverFoie gras -- a cooked, fattened duck or goose liver, sold as a terrine or bloc. "Half of a cold cooked fat liver" is roughly 8-12 oz depending on the bird. Ordinary chicken livers, cooked and cooled, will make a workable if plainer filling.
- Truffles and glaze"Trimmings of the truffles" assumes you are peeling fresh ones; the peelings and their soaking liquor went into the sauce. With tinned or jarred truffle, use the packing juice. "Melted glaze" is glace de viande, veal or beef stock reduced to a syrup.
- Frying"Boiling fat" means 350-360F for the croquettes, which are already cooked through and only need coloring. The five minutes given for the Queen-style croustades is for a much thicker piece and assumes the double egg-and-crumb coating; watch the color rather than the clock.
- Scale of the last recipeA quart of raw rice with two quarts of broth yields several pounds of cooked rice -- far more than the half-dozen croustades the text then cuts. Quarter it for six.
- SalpiconSmall uniform dice of cooked ingredients bound in sauce. Here, shrimp and mushrooms in a thick cream sauce, hot, spooned in at the last moment so the fried rice case does not soften.
- The mortarFor the croustade, pounding is what turns tender rice into a paste that will hold a raised-pie shape. A food processor does it in seconds, but stop early -- overworked rice turns gluey and greasy in the fryer.
Oscar Tschirky published The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, and pages like this one show how completely American hotel cooking of the period had absorbed French professional practice. The rice border, the croustade and the salpicon filling all belong to service à la russe, where dishes came to the table in courses rather than all at once and needed to look architectural on the way. Rice was the cheapest structural material a kitchen had: it could be moulded into a ring to dam a curry, pounded into a pie shell, or pressed, chilled, cut and fried into little cups. The "Italian style" croquette here is essentially a supplì with foie gras and truffle in place of the Roman ragù and mozzarella -- an indication of what a New York hotel meant by Italian in the 1890s, which was Italian technique dressed in Parisian luxury ingredients.