Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Rice Paste for Sweets
Rice Paste for Sweets
Boil one-half pound of ground rice in as little water as it can be boiled in without burning it, strain it as dry as possible, and beat or pound it in a mortar with one ounce of butter and two eggs beaten very light.
A component recipe rather than a finished dish: it yields a stiff, pliable rice dough used as a base or casing for sweets. The original assumes you know what to do with it once made.
- Ground riceNot a modern rice pudding mix. Ground rice is rice milled to a gritty, semolina-like texture, coarser than rice flour; both are sold in South Asian and Middle Eastern groceries. Rice flour will work but gives a smoother, gummier paste.
- QuantitiesHalf a pound is 8 oz, roughly 1½ cups of ground rice. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. Eggs of the period were not sized to any standard and may have been smaller than a modern large egg.
- "As little water as it can be boiled in"This is the hinge. You are cooking the grain to a stiff porridge, not a slack one, because excess water has to be squeezed out again afterwards. The original gives no measure: use as little as you can and add more only if the pan threatens to catch.
- Straining dryTurn the cooked rice into a fine sieve or a cloth and press hard. Any water left behind makes a paste that slumps and will not hold a shape.
- PoundingThe recipe allows 'beat or pound'; a mortar breaks the grains down into a cohesive mass. A food processor does the same work in under a minute; work the butter in while the rice is still hot, then the beaten eggs once it has cooled enough not to scramble them.
- It is not finishedThe raw egg means the paste has to be baked, fried or steamed before eating. Beyond the title's 'for sweets', the original does not say what form it was meant to take.
- Yield and handlingThe original gives no yield or vessel. It stiffens as it cools and is easiest to shape while warm; press it into moulds with damp fingers rather than trying to roll it.
Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, was compiled while he was ma tre d'h tel at the Waldorf, and much of its pastry section reads like this one: terse working notes for cooks who already knew the finished form and needed only the proportions.