No. 3121

Souffle of Rice with Maraschino

Souffle de Riz au Marasquin

Boil six ounces of rice in plenty of water; drain and set it in a vessel and pour a little maraschino over. Prepare a vanilla souffle preparation (No. 3120) and after the egg-whites have been mixed in, dress it in layers in a souffle pan (Fig. 182), alternating each one with a small part of the well-drained rice. When the souffle pan is three-quarters full place it on a baking sheet and push it into a well heated oven; three minutes later remove to split the shape of a cross on top and return it to the oven to let cook for twenty-five minutes more, glazing it over with fresh butter. Serve as soon as it is taken from the oven, as souffles should never be left waiting to be served.

← No. 3120 Souffles in Cases with Vanilla or Orange—Sma Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3122 Souffle with Raspberries →

For the Modern Kitchen

A vanilla soufflé built in layers with liqueur-soaked rice folded between them, from a kitchen where soufflés went straight from the range to the dining room. Two things decide the outcome: the rice must be bone dry, and the dish must be eaten the minute it leaves the oven.

Drain the rice hardRanhofer says to drain it, then calls again for "well-drained" rice. Rice still carrying cooking water or pooled maraschino will weep into the base and collapse the layers. Spread it on a towel-lined tray and let it cool and dry before it goes anywhere near the whites.
Maraschino means the liqueurA clear, dry, bitter-edged cherry liqueur distilled from marasca cherries and their stones — Luxardo is the survivor most easily found. It is not the syrup from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries, which is a twentieth-century sweetened imitation and will make the dish cloying.
Six ounces of riceA weight, not a volume: a scant cup of raw medium- or long-grain rice, yielding roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups cooked. Boiled "in plenty of water" and drained, pasta-style, so the grains stay separate rather than binding into a pudding.
The base recipeNo. 3120 is not reproduced here; in this book a vanilla souffle base of this kind is generally a cooked cream of milk, sugar, flour and yolks, lightened with stiffly beaten whites. Any modern creme-patissiere souffle base will stand in.
Oven heatNo temperature is given; "well heated" is best read as a hot oven, somewhere in the 375-400F range on a modern dial. Ranhofer's total is roughly 28 minutes (three minutes, then twenty-five more), which suits a single large souffle; individual ramekins will need considerably less.
The cross on topCutting a shallow cross into the set surface three minutes in is not explained in the text; the usual reading is that it gives the rising batter a place to break rather than tearing at random. Work fast and close the door.
Glazing with butterMelted butter brushed or dotted over the top during baking, which browns the crust. Icing sugar dusted over in the last minutes does much the same job and is easier to apply without deflating the soufflé.
Three-quarters full, and no waitingFill the dish only to three-quarters so the rise has somewhere to go. The closing instruction is the real one: a souffle begins falling within a minute or two of leaving the oven, so have the table sitting before you have the dish out.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and its soufflé chapter is essentially one master preparation rung through a long list of flavourings — vanilla, orange, raspberry, and here rice with maraschino. Maraschino itself comes from Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, distilled from marasca cherries with their crushed stones, which gives it the faint almond bitterness that keeps a sweet rice dish from going flat; by the late nineteenth century it was a fixture of American and French dessert cookery, splashed over fruit, ices and pastries alike. The rice is the older element: sweetened boiled rice with milk and eggs runs back through European court cookery for centuries, and folding it into a soufflé base is a way of dressing a nursery ingredient for a restaurant dining room. The name has since been muddled by the cocktail cherry, which was originally preserved in this liqueur and later, once cheaper syrups and dye took over, kept only the word.