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Rice Menagere
Put six ounces of well-washed rice into a saucepan of boiling water, and blanch it for five or six minutes; then remove and drain it. Blanch four or five ounces of streaky bacon, cut it up into pieces about one inch square, put them into a deep fryingpan and fry them until they are yellow, then add the rice, a small quantity of pepper, and about three breakfast cupfuls of rich broth. Stir often over the fire for about twenty minutes, then remove the pan from the fire, add one breakfast cupful of tomato sauce, turn the whole onto a dish, and serve.
A stovetop rice pilaf built on bacon fat and broth, finished with tomato sauce off the heat. It moves quickly once the rice goes in, so have the broth hot and the sauce measured before you start.
- The hinge: add the tomato sauce off the fireOscar has you pull the pan before stirring in the sauce. Acid added while the rice is still cooking tends to keep the grains firm and slow absorption; folded in at the end, the sauce loosens the rice rather than cooking down.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup and is usually reckoned at somewhere between 8 and 10 fluid ounces, so three cupfuls is roughly 3 to 3 3/4 cups of broth to 6 ounces of rice, which is generous; hold back the last of it and add it only if the pan goes dry before the grains are tender.
- Six ounces of riceSix ounces by weight is close to a cup of long-grain rice measured by volume. Any plain long or medium grain works; parboiled rice will hold its shape best under twenty minutes of frequent stirring.
- Why blanch twiceBlanching the rice for five minutes washes off surface starch so the finished dish stays loose rather than creamy. Blanching the bacon draws out salt and heavy smoke, a habit from an era when bacon was cured much harder than today. With modern supermarket bacon you can skip it, but taste before adding any salt either way.
- Streaky baconThat is American-style belly bacon, fat marbled through the lean. Cut it into one-inch squares as directed rather than dicing small; the larger pieces stay meaty instead of dissolving into the rice.
- Fry until yellowMost likely means lightly coloured and rendered, not crisp and brown. The rendered fat is the cooking medium for the rice, so stop while the bacon is still soft.
- Rich brothThe recipe does not specify; a well-reduced meat stock is the obvious reading. Commercial low-sodium broth will do, but reduce it a little first or the dish tastes thin, and remember the bacon is already contributing salt.
- YieldServes four as a side dish, two or three as a light main course. It is best eaten straight from the pan; reheated, the rice tightens.
Menagere is French for housekeeper or housewife, and in restaurant menu language it signals the plain domestic treatment: bacon, broth, a little tomato, nothing luxurious. That it appears in a Waldorf-Astoria book is characteristic of Oscar Tschirky's compilations, which set grand banquet cookery beside modest household dishes drawn from the same French professional vocabulary. The technique here, blanching rice before finishing it in fat and stock, was standard in French kitchens of the period; the frequent stirring Oscar calls for puts the dish somewhere between a pilaf and a risotto. Blanching salt pork or bacon before use is a reminder of how much harder cured meats were salted before reliable refrigeration.