No. 3456

Rice Ice Cream, Paradise

Creme de Riz, Paradis

Wash and blanch twelve ounces of Carolina rice; drain. Take four ounces of it and cook it thoroughly in four quarts of milk; strain through a sieve. Put thirty-two egg-yolks in a tinned basin, add two pounds and a quarter of sugar, and beat both together, then put in the rice pulp; set it on the fire and beat steadily until the preparation covers the spatula; leave stand till cold; run it through a sieve, and replace it in the basin after it has been well cleaned; lay it on ice; whip to have the mixture light, and stir in as much whipped cream. Cook the remainder of the rice in a vanilla syrup at twenty degrees; cool off, drain, add it to the composition, and freeze.

← No. 3455 Burnt Almond Ice Cream and with Angelica Ices & Ice Creams No. 3457 Rice Ice Cream with Citron, Garnished with T →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote for a hotel kitchen, and this is a banquet-scale formula: 32 yolks, four quarts of milk, better than two pounds of sugar. Divided by eight it becomes four yolks, two cups of milk, about 4 1/2 oz sugar and 1 1/2 oz rice, which fits a domestic ice cream maker.

The hinge: two rices, two jobsOf the twelve ounces, four are boiled to collapse in milk and sieved to thicken and flavor the custard; the remaining eight are cooked separately in vanilla syrup so they stay in whole grains and are folded in at the end. Cooking all of it together gives you rice pudding, not Paradis.
"Syrup at twenty degrees"That is 20 degrees Baume, the hydrometer scale widely used in 19th-century pastry kitchens — roughly 36 percent sugar by weight, on the order of a pound of sugar to a quart of water. Simmer the grains in it gently; they absorb sugar, resist freezing hard, and stay tender in the finished ice.
"Covers the spatula"The nappe stage, 180-185°F (82-85°C) on a thermometer. Push much past that and the yolks can scramble; a thermometer is more reliable than the eye here.
Tinned basinProbably a copper basin lined with tin: copper conducts evenly, and tin linings wore through and were periodically re-tinned. A heavy stainless bowl over simmering water does the same work.
Carolina riceA long-grain type once grown in the South Carolina Lowcountry and the standard "good rice" of American cookbooks. Ordinary long-grain works; Carolina Gold, now grown again in small quantities, is the closest thing to what Ranhofer bought.
BlanchingWash, then start the rice in cold water, bring to a boil for a minute or two, and drain. This removes surface starch and any staleness before the real cooking begins.
"As much whipped cream"An equal volume of the cooled, whipped custard base — a very high proportion, which is what keeps a starch-heavy mixture from setting up icy and dense. Whip the cream to soft peaks only, or it will break when folded.
FreezingFold the syruped grains in at the last moment and churn. Ranhofer's kitchen would have frozen this in an ice-and-salt freezer worked by hand; a domestic machine is equivalent. Rice ices firm up hard in the freezer, so let it temper 10-15 minutes before serving.
YieldThe full recipe makes something over two gallons — plan on a party or scale it down. The eighth-scale version above gives about a quart.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) is the record of thirty-odd years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and its ice cream chapter runs to dozens of numbered variations built on the same custard base — burnt almond, citron, angelica, and this one. "Paradis" reads as a fancy name rather than a description of ingredients; the dish itself belongs to the long European tradition of rice desserts enriched with egg and cream, of which riz à l'impératrice is the best-known relative. What dates it most clearly is the Baumé hydrometer reading for the syrup: sugar work in a professional kitchen of this period was generally measured by density with an instrument rather than by temperature with a candy thermometer, and a cook was expected to know what 20 degrees meant without being told.