No. 3214

Rice with Apricots

Riz aux Abricots

Blanch half a pound of rice; cook it till tender in milk with vanilla and when cooked remove it from the fire, sweeten it, add raw cream and fresh butter and pour it into another saucepan to let get cold, stirring from time to time. Place the preparation on ice and incorporate slowly into it one pint of whipped cream. When well stirred in dress it in layers in a souffle pan (Fig. 182) incrusted in ice, covering each layer with one of apricot marmalade (No. 3675); smooth it dome-shaped and decorate the summit with candied pineapple cut in pieces.

← No. 3213 Rice Mirabeau Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3215 Rice with Cream and Raspberries →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a cook who already knows how to make a rice pudding base and who has ice on hand; the quantities of milk, sugar and cream are left to judgment. What follows fills in the gaps.

Rice and blanchingHalf a pound is about 1 1/8 cups of short- or medium-grain rice (Carolina rice was the standard American choice of the period; Arborio or Calrose behave similarly). To blanch it, boil two minutes in plain water and drain, which washes off loose starch and any raw taste before the milk goes in.
The milk is unmeasuredReckon on about 1 1/2 quarts of whole milk to half a pound of rice, simmered gently and uncovered for 30-40 minutes until the grains are soft and the mixture is thick but still loose. It will firm considerably as it cools, so stop while it still pours.
VanillaA split bean steeped in the milk, not extract, which flashes off over a long simmer. Remove the pod before sweetening.
"Raw cream and fresh butter"Raw here means unwhipped and uncooked, stirred into the hot rice off the heat; fresh butter means unsalted. Buy pasteurized cream and use roughly 1/2 cup cream and 2 tablespoons butter, with about 3/4 cup sugar.
The hinge: cool it completely firstTransferring to a second, cold pan and stirring as it cools is not fussiness. If the rice is even warm when the pint of whipped cream goes in, the cream deflates and the whole thing turns into a soupy pudding rather than a light, sliceable one. Chill it over ice until cold to the touch, then fold in the cream in three additions.
Whipped cream measurementOne pint means a pint of liquid cream before whipping, which roughly doubles in volume. Whip to soft peaks only; stiff cream folds in as lumps.
"Incrusted in ice"The soufflé pan was set into a tub of cracked ice to set the mixture hard without freezing it solid. A charlotte or soufflé mold in the refrigerator for four hours does the same job; a brief spell in the freezer firms the dome for unmolding.
Apricot marmaladeRanhofer's No. 3675 is a thick apricot purée cooked with sugar, closer to a stiff fruit paste than to a jam with peel. A good apricot preserve reduced in a pan until a spoon leaves a clean track will layer without weeping into the rice.
YieldUse a mold of at least three quarts, and expect around ten to twelve portions. It is rich, and it wants small servings and no sauce beyond the fruit already in it.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print. Riz aux abricots belongs to a family of cold rice entremets that filled several pages of the book, all built on the same sweetened vanilla rice lightened with whipped cream and then varied by fruit: Mirabeau on one side of it, raspberries on the other. The technique descends from the French riz à l'impératrice, generally traced to the mid-nineteenth-century Parisian kitchen, which set the same base with gelatin; Ranhofer's version appears instead to rely on cold and butter to hold its shape, which is why the mold must sit in ice. Apricots were a natural partner, and the candied pineapple on top is a reminder of how such glacé fruit was used as a garnish in the 1890s.