No. 898

Croustades, Carolina Style

Croustades a la Caroline

Pick well half a pound of rice, wash and put it into a saucepan, moistening with some fat, beef stock (No. 194a) to three times its height, then boil, cover the saucepan and continue the boiling for thirty minutes; by this time the moisture should be entirely evaporated. Mix in with this rice, four ounces of butter, beating it in well, then fill up some six-sided molds after they have been dipped in ice water and drained; let the rice get cold, unmold, roll them in fine cracker dust, then in beaten eggs, and finish by rolling them in fresh bread-crumbs, smooth the surfaces with a knife, and mark an incision on top with a three-quarters of an inch pastry cutter, then fry them to a fine color; remove the covers, empty out the insides and fill them with the following garnishing: Cut some shrimps and mushrooms into three-sixteenths of an inch squares; put them into a sautoir with a cream sauce (No. 454), season and bring it to a boil while stirring steadily, thicken well with egg-yolks, fresh butter and cream, and fill the croustades with this; lay on top of each one a round piece of truffle instead of a cover, and dress these croustades on a folded napkin.

← No. 897 Croustades a la Periguex Hot Side Dishes No. 899 Croustades of Gnocquis a la Rivoli →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is building an edible container: a stiff, buttery rice paste moulded, breaded, fried, hollowed and filled. The rice is structural, so nothing about its cooking is negotiable.

The hinge: cook the rice dryHalf a pound of rice (about 1 1/4 cups) with stock "to three times its height" means the liquid brought up to three times the depth of the rice in the pan; how that translates into a volume ratio depends on the pan. Covered and simmered thirty minutes, it must finish with no free moisture at all; any wetness and the moulded shapes will slump and the coating will blow apart in the fryer.
Fat beef stockNo. 194a is Ranhofer's cross-referenced beef stock; "fat" here indicates the richer, unskimmed sort rather than a lean broth. A good unsalted beef stock with a couple of tablespoons of butter or beef fat added does the same job. Season lightly, since the rice reduces the liquid to nothing and concentrates the salt.
The moldsSix-sided molds are small hexagonal timbale forms; Ranhofer gives no size. Dariole molds or straight-sided ramekins work; the ice-water dip is a release trick, and the rice must be packed hard and chilled thoroughly before unmolding.
Cracker dustFinely rolled plain soda or water crackers, sieved. It is a first coat that dries the surface so the egg wash grips; fine dry breadcrumbs are the nearest modern equivalent, with fresh crumbs for the outer layer as written.
Frying"Fry to a fine color" means deep fat, around 350-375F in modern terms, only until the crumb is evenly brown. The rice inside is already cooked, so you are only setting the crust. Fry them chilled through, or the shapes will distort.
The lid and the hollowThe incision made with a 3/4 in. cutter before frying lets you lift out a disc after frying and scoop the soft interior with a small spoon, leaving a shell. Do it while the croustades are still warm.
Egg-yolk liaisonBring the cream sauce with shrimp and mushrooms to a boil first, then pull it off the heat before whisking in the yolks, butter and cream. Once the yolks are in it must not boil again or the filling curdles.
Shrimp timingCut the shrimp small and add them to the hot sauce only long enough to firm up, a minute or two. Ranhofer does not say whether the shrimps are already cooked, though shrimp were commonly bought boiled; modern raw shrimp diced to 3/16 in. need almost no time.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no yield; half a pound of rice beaten with four ounces of butter fills a number of small molds. The folded napkin is a service convention for fried items; a warm platter is fine.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is organised as a working reference, with cross-referenced stock and sauce numbers rather than standalone recipes. A croustade is normally a case of fried bread or pastry; using compressed rice as the shell is an unusual substitution. The name "a la Caroline" is often taken to point to Carolina rice, the long-grain crop of the South Carolina lowcountry that was the benchmark table rice in American kitchens through the nineteenth century and appears by name on menus and in grocers' advertisements of the period; on that reading the shrimp filling reinforces the Southern coastal association, though the derivation is an inference rather than a documented one. By the time Ranhofer was writing, Carolina rice cultivation was already in decline, and the name was drifting from a place of origin toward a general term for good white long-grain rice.