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Rice Pancakes
Wash one-half pound of rice, put it into a saucepan with some water, and boil it to a jelly, adding more water when required. When cooked, leave it until cold; then mix with it one pint of cream, eight or nine eggs, a pinch of salt, and a small quantity of grated nutmeg. Warm one-half pound of butter, then stir it in with the other ingredients, adding as much flour as will make a thick batter. Fry the pancakes as usual, using as little butter as possible. Serve them either plain, or with jam or preserves.
A rich, custardy batter more like a rice soufflé pancake than a flapjack. The proportions are hotel-scale and the method depends entirely on cooking the rice past the point most cooks would stop.
- Boil it to a jellyThis is the hinge. Half a pound of rice (about 1⅛ cups raw) needs to be cooked in far more water than usual, stirred often, until the grains collapse into a thick starchy paste with no separate grains left. Rice cooked pilaf-style will give you lumpy pancakes that will not hold together.
- Cooling is not optionalThe rice must be fully cold before the cream and eggs go in, or the eggs will scramble. The paste stiffens as it cools, which is normal; the cream loosens it again.
- MeasuresHalf a pound of rice is roughly 1⅛ to 1¼ cups raw; a pint of cream is 2 cups; half a pound of butter is 2 sticks. Eggs were not sold to a standard size in this period and may often have been smaller than today's large egg, so eight is a reasonable reading of "eight or nine."
- "As much flour as will make a thick batter"Expect somewhere around 1 to 1½ cups, added a little at a time. The target is a batter that mounds on the spoon and spreads slowly, not one that pours.
- Fat on fatWith two sticks of butter already in the batter, the instruction to use as little butter as possible in the pan is meant literally. A barely greased, well-seasoned pan or griddle over medium heat is right; too much added fat and the pancakes fry rather than set.
- They cook slower than you expectThe high egg and cream content means the centres are still liquid when the outside colours. Keep the heat moderate, make them small, and give each side a few minutes.
- YieldThe original gives none. The quantities make a very large batch — well beyond a family's worth of small pancakes.
Oscar Tschirky was never a chef at the Waldorf — he was the ma ypo