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Apples, Richelieu
Core and peel nicely six fine, sound, even, round apples of fairly good size. Have in a medium-sized saucepan one-half pound powdered sugar with two quarts cold water and half a small stick of vanilla; as soon as it comes to a boiling point carefully drop in the apples and boil for fifteen minutes, being careful to turn them over once in a while. Remove the apples only with a skimmer and keep warm. Let the liquor in which they were boiled reduce to half a pint, then add two tablespoons good rum.
Place in a small saucepan three ounces good, well-cleaned, raw rice, add the vanilla stick used to boil the apples, etc., one pint milk, one ounce powdered sugar; place the pan on the fire and let slowly boil for forty-five minutes, being careful to frequently mix with a wooden spoon mean-while. Remove the vanilla stick, nicely dress the rice on a large dish, place the apples on top of the rice. Strain the syrup of the apples over all and serve.
A poached apple and vanilla rice pudding assembled at the last minute. The work is in the timing: the syrup reduction takes far longer than the apples or the rice, so start it the moment the fruit comes out.
- Powdered sugarIn a book of this period "powdered sugar" means finely milled granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary granulated works throughout; half a pound is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons, and the ounce for the rice is about 2 tablespoons.
- The reduction is the long jobTwo quarts of sweetened liquid down to half a pint is a reduction of roughly seven-eighths, which takes a long stretch at a hard boil in a wide pan. Move it to a wide saucepan or skillet after the apples come out, or it will still be watery when the rice is done.
- Choose apples that holdFifteen minutes in a thin syrup can collapse a soft-fleshed apple such as McIntosh. Use a firm baking apple — Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Northern Spy — and check with a skewer at ten minutes; they should be tender but still holding their round shape.
- Keep the poach at a bare simmerThe instruction to "boil" is period usage. A rolling boil knocks peeled apples apart; hold the syrup just under a simmer and turn the fruit every few minutes so the exposed tops cook evenly.
- The riceThree ounces of raw rice is a scant half cup, cooked in a pint (2 cups) of milk — a loose 1:4 ratio that gives a soft, spoonable pudding rather than separate grains. Use a short or medium grain rice; long grain will not release enough starch to bind.
- Milk scorchesForty-five minutes of milk over direct heat needs the lowest flame you have and a heavy pan, plus the frequent stirring the recipe specifies. Scraping the bottom corners of the pan with the wooden spoon matters more than stirring the surface.
- The rumTwo tablespoons stirred into the finished syrup off the boil. Added earlier the alcohol simply evaporates; the point is the aroma over the warm fruit.
- Vanilla beanHalf a small stick, used twice — first in the poaching syrup, then rinsed and dropped into the rice. Split it lengthwise before the first use to get anything out of it. A teaspoon of extract stirred into the finished rice is the substitute, though it will not perfume the syrup.
- YieldSix apples, six servings. It is served warm on one large dish rather than plated, the rice dressed first and the apples set on top.
Dishes labelled "Richelieu" run all through the French classical repertoire — a garnish for meat, a sauce, a cut of fish, and here a sweet — and the name is generally traced to the eighteenth-century maréchal duc de Richelieu, a noted table-keeper, rather than to the cardinal. The construction itself is standard nineteenth-century French pastry-kitchen practice: fruit poached in vanilla syrup, set on a bed of rice cooked in milk, and masked with the poaching liquid reduced to a glaze. Nothing is wasted — the vanilla bean does duty twice and the poaching water becomes the sauce — which is the economy of a professional kitchen rather than a frugal household one.