No. 3115

Rice with Apples

Riz aux Pommes

Prepare some minced apples, the same as for an apple charlotte (No. 3008), not having them too sweet. Blanch eight ounces of picked and washed rice, drain on a sieve, refresh and put it in a saucepan with some milk; cook it slowly without stirring, keeping it slightly consistent, and lastly mix in four ounces of powdered lemon sugar, a few spoonfuls of cream and a piece of butter; remove to a much slower fire in order to allow the liquid to became entirely absorbed, then take up the rice with a spoon and place it in layers on a deep dish, alternating each one with a layer of the apples, giving the whole a dome shape, and finishing with the rice. Dredge the top with cinnamon or vanilla sugar and serve at once.

Sugar Flavored with Vanilla.—Have four ounces of vanilla beans, split them in two, chop and pound them in a mortar with a pound and a half of loaf sugar until exceedingly fine, then pass through a fine hair sieve. Keep in a hermetically closed box in a dry place until needed for use.

← No. 3114 Pudding with Hazel-Nuts—Souffled Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3116 Rissoles with Preserves and with Almond Crea →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have already made the apple filling elsewhere in the book and that you can judge rice by eye. Two conversions and one omission are worth settling before you start.

The apple layerThe charlotte filling it refers to is apples cooked down in butter with sugar until it is a thick, almost dry marmalade that holds its shape on a spoon. A wet compote will slump and soak the rice, so cook it further than seems necessary and follow the instruction not to over-sweeten — the rice is already carrying four ounces of sugar.
Milk quantityNo amount is given. Eight ounces (about 1 1/4 cups) of rice will take roughly a quart of milk cooked this way; add it in stages rather than all at once, since "slightly consistent" means creamy but still loose enough to spoon.
Blanching firstBoiling the rice briefly in water, draining and refreshing washes off surface starch so the milk stage stays glossy rather than gluey. Do not skip it, and do not stir once the milk goes in — the grains are meant to stay whole.
Lemon sugarSugar rubbed hard with lemon zest until it is damp and yellow, then dried; the zest of two lemons worked into four ounces (1/2 cup) of sugar is about right. It is not lemon juice and not candied peel.
Loaf sugarCone or block sugar, pounded before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent; superfine dissolves faster in the rice.
The two heat stagesThe rice finishes on a much slower fire so the remaining liquid is absorbed rather than boiled away. This is the hinge: assemble it too wet and the dome will not stand, too dry and it sets into a cake once it cools.
Vanilla sugar as writtenFour ounces of vanilla beans to a pound and a half of sugar was a restaurant-scale, restaurant-priced proportion. One or two split beans pounded into a cup of sugar gives plenty of flavor; a sealed jar and a week's wait works as well as a mortar.
Yield and timingThe recipe gives no yield; eight ounces of rice plus the apples would plausibly serve about six as a hot entremets. "Serve at once" is meant literally — rice pudding stiffens as it cools and the dome loses its shape, so build it just before it goes to the table.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the food he served over thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the book's method plainly: a dish defined by cross-reference, assuming a kitchen brigade that already has apple marmalade and flavored sugars standing by. Riz aux pommes belongs to the French repertoire of molded rice entremets that filled out the sweet course in the nineteenth century, cousins of riz à l'impératrice and the apple charlottes and gâteaux de riz that Carême's generation formalized. Rice cooked in sweetened milk was cheap and endlessly moldable, which is why it turns up both in grand hotel menus and in domestic cookbooks of the same decades — the difference here is the finish, a dome built in alternating layers and dusted with vanilla sugar that the kitchen ground itself, at a time when vanilla extract was still a young and much-adulterated commodity.