No. 737

Rice Garnishing Indian Style and with Butter

Garniture de Riz a l'Indienne et au Beurre

Rice makes an excellent garnishing, and is adapted for the use of many meats, fish, poultry and game. Fat rice is served with poultry, and is merely rice cooked in chicken broth or soup stock (No. 194a), slightly fat; it should be rather more consistent than otherwise, but at the same time tender or soft; it is finished with a little nutmeg, and sometimes with a handful of grated parmesan cheese.

Rice, Indian Style, is served likewise as a garnishing for chicken or veal, and is prepared with fine Indian rice, its grains being long, white and whole; in case none of this can be procured, then take Carolina rice. Plunge it into a bountiful supply of boiling water after picking and washing it, and as soon as it no longer cracks between the teeth, then drain it through a colander, and wash it off with salted tepid water, spread it over a large sieve, cover with a cloth, and leave it to dry for a few moments at the oven door, then dress it in a vegetable dish, cover and serve.

Rice with Butter.—Blanch some rice for five or six minutes, drain and wash it off with tepid water, then leave it to dry on a cloth. Put two spoonfuls of chopped onion into a saucepan, leave it to fry in some butter, and then add to it the rice; when it is very hot, moisten with white stock (No. 194a), and leave it to finish cooking on a good fire, keeping it slightly firm, set it to smother for a few moments at the oven door, then remove it, and beat up into it with a fork, a good sized piece of butter. Dress the rice in a vegetable dish, cover it with a small napkin previously dampened in hot water, put the cover on the dish and serve.

← No. 736 Ramisolle Garnishing Garnishings No. 738 Richelieu Garnishing, Ancient and Modern →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three related rice garnishes from Ranhofer's The Epicurean: a soft, stock-cooked "fat rice," a plain boiled and dried rice in the Indian manner, and a buttered onion pilaf. No quantities are given for any of them, which is normal for a garnish chapter — scale to the platter you are dressing.

The hinge: rinse and dry, don't stirBoth versions depend on washing the cooked grains in tepid water (salted, in the Indian-style version) to strip surface starch, then drying them so they stay separate. Ranhofer specifies a fork for beating the butter into the finished rice.
"Indian rice" and Carolina riceRanhofer specifies a long, white, whole grain; the nearest modern equivalents are basmati or patna. Carolina rice, his fallback, was the American long-grain of the period; ordinary long-grain white rice is the direct modern equivalent. Do not use arborio or any short grain.
No. 194 aThe recipe itself glosses the cross-reference as chicken broth or soup stock in the first instance and as white stock in the second. Unsalted or lightly salted chicken stock stands in; if using commercial stock, cut it with water, since rice absorbs the liquid entirely and concentrates the salt.
"No longer cracks between the teeth"His doneness test for the boiled rice: bite a grain and listen for the hard chalky snap of a raw core. Once that is gone the rice comes out at once. On modern long-grain in abundant boiling water this is roughly 10 to 12 minutes.
The oven doorRanhofer dries the rice 'at the oven door', i.e. in the residual warmth outside the oven itself rather than in it. The lowest setting your oven has, or simply a warm spot, does the job; a few minutes is enough to dry the surface of the grains, and longer will harden them.
"Two spoonfuls" of onionPeriod table spoonfuls, so about 2 tablespoons of finely chopped onion. Sweat it in butter without colouring — browned onion muddies both flavour and colour in a white garnish.
Liquid for the buttered riceThe rice is blanched five or six minutes first, so it needs less stock than raw rice would. Add the hot stock in stages until the grains are just tender and still "slightly firm", judged by eye.
Fat riceThis one is cooked in slightly fat chicken broth or stock and meant to be soft rather than separate, though Ranhofer wants it 'rather more consistent than otherwise'. It is finished with a little nutmeg and sometimes a handful of grated parmesan.
The dampened napkinA cloth wrung out in hot water and laid over the rice under the cover keeps it from drying or forming a skin on the way to the table. A sheet of parchment or a lid set slightly askew does the same job.
YieldA cup of raw rice yields about three cups cooked. Ranhofer gives no quantities for any of these garnishes; scale to the dish being dressed.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his professional reference, organised so a cook could look up a garnish by number and attach it to whatever was leaving the range. Rice enters that system as a French kitchen ingredient rather than an American staple: riz \plain-boiled, drained, dried, served dry and separate — was the standard European shorthand for the Indian and Anglo-Indian way of cooking rice, and it arrived in French kitchens through the same nineteenth-century channels that brought curry powder onto restaurant menus. The au beurre version, with onion sweated in butter before the grain goes in, is the pilaf method that Escoffier would shortly codify as riz pilaw. The Carolina rice Ranhofer names as a substitute was the long-grain crop of the South Carolina and Georgia lowcountry, a rice culture already in steep decline after the Civil War, with Louisiana overtaking it well before the century closed as the industry moved west to Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.