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Turkish Pilau
Put a breakfast cupful of stewed and strained tomatoes in a saucepan with one-half pint of broth, one minced onion and season well with pepper and salt. When boiling put one breakfast cupful of well-washed rice in, stir it lightly till the liquor is absorbed, then put in one teacupful of butter. Place the pan over a slow fire and steam for twenty minutes. Remove the lid, stir the pilau lightly, cover with a cloth and let the steam escape; add a breakfast cupful of chopped and cooked meat if desired. Serve the pilau as a vegetable without the meat and as an entree with it.
A straightforward tomato pilaf, but the period cup names and the enormous quantity of butter need translating before you start.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a modern measuring cup, roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces and sometimes more. Treating each as 1 cup gives 1 cup rice to 2 cups total liquid (1 cup tomato plus 1 cup broth), which is a sound ratio for long-grain white rice.
- Teacupful of butterA teacup in this period runs about a third to a half cup, so the recipe as written calls for 5 to 8 tablespoons of butter for one cup of rice. Two to four tablespoons stirred in at that stage produces a pilaf a modern palate will recognise; more simply makes it richer, not wrong.
- Half a pint of brothOne cup. Unsalted or low-sodium stock is worth using here, since the tomato reduces and the seasoning goes in at the start.
- Stewed and strained tomatoesCanned tomato purée or passata is a reasonable equivalent; straining is what removes the skins and seeds and gives a smoother sauce.
- Slow fireThe lowest setting that maintains a bare simmer, with a heavy pan or a diffuser. The twenty minutes is a covered steam, not a boil, and the pan should not be stirred during it.
- The clothLifting the lid, stirring the rice lightly and then laying a folded cloth over the pan lets the steam escape instead of condensing and dripping back onto the surface grains. The recipe stirs before the cloth goes on; don't stir hard again afterwards.
- The meatIt goes in already cooked and only needs warming through, so fold it in at the end as the recipe directs rather than during the steaming. Chopped leftover roast lamb, chicken or beef would all suit.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice feeds three to four as a side dish, or two to three as a main course once the meat is added.
Pilau is one of several English spellings of a word that reaches English from Persian pilāw/polow, with cognates in Turkish pilav and Hindi pulao; it appears in British cookbooks from the eighteenth century onward. The recipe's frank note that the pilau serves as a vegetable plain and as an entrée with meat folded in suits a dish that could fill two slots on a long hotel menu. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, published his cook book in 1896, drawing on the hotel's working repertoire, and a cheap, flexible dish built around yesterday's roast shows the practical side of a kitchen better remembered for its terrapin and its salads.