No. 3275

Rice Cakes

Galettes au Riz

Put in a pan four ounces of wheat flour and four ounces of rice flour sifted together; make a hollow in the center and lay in two ounces of sugar, a pinch of salt, four eggs and one gill of milk; work the flour into the liquid and knead it in such a way as to obtain a smooth dough, then add another gill of milk and continue to work it until the paste is well mixed, then finally pour in two ounces of melted butter and also add half a pint of rice, blanched and cooked till quite soft. Just when ready to use work it well with a teaspoonful of baking powder and a teaspoonful of flour, and when sufficiently kneaded and the paste is smooth it will be ready. Finish like buckwheat cakes (No. 3272).

← No. 3274 Indian Cakes Breakfast Cakes No. 3276 Wheat Cakes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes this as a dough but it behaves as a thick griddle batter, slackened by the cooked rice. The cross-reference to No. 3272 means: drop onto a greased griddle, cook until bubbled and set, turn once.

GillA gill is half a cup, so the two additions come to 1 cup of milk in total. Add the second half only once the first is fully worked in, or the rice flour will lump.
Half a pint of riceHalf a pint is 1 cup. Ranhofer does not say whether this is measured before or after cooking; read as raw it gives a very rice-heavy paste, so many will prefer to take it as about a cup of cooked rice (roughly 1/3 cup dry). "Blanched" here means started in boiling water and drained before finishing until very soft.
Rice flourUse plain white rice flour, not glutinous (sweet) rice flour, which will make the cakes gummy. Sift it with the wheat flour as directed; rice flour clumps badly and will not disperse later.
Weights to volumeFour ounces of wheat flour is a scant cup; four ounces of rice flour, being heavier by volume, is about 3/4 cup. Two ounces of sugar is a generous 1/4 cup, two ounces of butter 4 tablespoons.
The hingeThe baking powder and the extra teaspoon of flour go in "just when ready to use." Mixed in early, the leavening is spent before the batter reaches the griddle and the cakes come out flat and dense.
Griddle heatRanhofer gives no temperature. Medium heat, hot enough that a drop of water skitters, works; rice-flour batters tend to colour more slowly than all-wheat ones, so give them the extra minute per side rather than raising the heat.
Texture to expectNot a fluffy pancake. The whole grains of rice stay distinct, giving a chewy, slightly custardy cake. Keep them small, three inches or so, so they cook through before the outside colors.
YieldAbout sixteen small cakes, enough for four at breakfast. Serve hot with butter and sugar or syrup.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its breakfast-cake chapter shows how thoroughly French technique was applied to American griddle cooking: buckwheat cakes, Indian (cornmeal) cakes and wheat cakes sit side by side. Galette is a broad French word for a flat round cake, and rice galettes of this kind are often said to have been a way of using up cooked rice, a habit associated with both French and Southern American kitchens. Rice flour was not exotic in the period — Carolina and Louisiana rice were milled in quantity, and rice flour appears regularly in nineteenth-century American cookbooks as a means of lightening or stretching wheat. The instruction to add leavening at the last moment reflects the era's chemical baking powders, known to lose their lift if left standing in a wet batter.