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cup flour 1 egg, well beaten (amount may vary) Steam the cooked rice until very soft in part of the milk, using one-fourth cup. Add remainder › of milk and other ingredients, beating well. Bake on hot griddle. This amount will make a plateful.
Rice Pudding (with Corn-starch) 1 cup boiled rice 3 cups milk + cup sugar
A thrift recipe for griddle cakes built on cold cooked rice, of the sort that fills the cereal chapter of any leftover book. Several of the quantities in the text are incomplete, so treat the proportions as a guide and judge the batter by eye.
- Ambiguous measurementsThe flour is given as "cup flour" with no fraction, and neither the quantity of rice nor the total milk is stated. Rather than guess, build the batter from about a cup of cold cooked rice, add milk until it is loose and creamy, then work in flour a spoonful at a time until it just holds together.
- Softening the rice"Steam the cooked rice until very soft in part of the milk" means warming the rice gently in a quarter cup of milk over low heat, covered, until the grains swell and lose their chill. Cold rice straight from the refrigerator stays gritty in the finished cake.
- Griddle heat"Hot griddle" means hot enough that a drop of water skitters across the surface. Rice cakes are best given a couple of minutes a side rather than rushed.
- Grease the surfaceRice grains catch and scorch where a wheat batter would release. Wipe the griddle with fat or oil between batches even if it is well seasoned.
- Batter thicknessThe mixture should drop from a spoon in a heavy blob, not pour. If it spreads thin the grains separate and the cakes fall apart when turned.
- YieldThe recipe promises only "a plateful," which fixes no count; the number of cakes depends on how large they are made.
Books of leftover cookery multiplied in the English-speaking kitchen in the period when domestic economy was widely taught as a household discipline. Cold boiled rice was a standing problem of the period: rice was cheap and often cooked in quantity, and a range of recipes existed to return it to the table as griddle cakes, croquettes, puddings and fritters. A corn-starch rice pudding follows immediately after this recipe in the text.