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Rice Au Lait De Cocoa
Take out the milk from two good-sized cocoanuts and place in a saucepan with a pint cold milk, adding the well shredded fibres--the white part--of one only, with three ounces raw rice, two ounces sugar, a teaspoon vanilla essence and a saltspoon salt. Set the pan on the fire and let slowly cook for forty minutes, frequently mixing at the bottom with a wooden spoon to prevent burning. Crack in one fresh egg, stir while heating for one minute. Remove, add two gills vanilla whipped cream. Thoroughly mix and serve.
A coconut rice pudding, cooked entirely on the stovetop and finished with egg and whipped cream. The instructions are terse in the way of professional kitchen notes, so a few things need spelling out.
- What "the milk from two cocoanuts" meansThis is the thin liquid inside the shell, not the pressed coconut milk sold in cans. Two good-sized nuts give roughly a cup to a cup and a half. Canned coconut milk will work but is far richer, so use about a cup.
- "Shredded fibres--the white part"The firm white meat of one nut, grated. Expect roughly 3 to 4 cups from a single medium coconut. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is a reasonable substitute; sweetened flake is not, unless the sugar is reduced.
- Weights to volumeThree ounces raw rice is a scant half cup; two ounces sugar is about a quarter cup. A gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is a cup; the recipe does not specify whether this is measured before or after whipping. A saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon.
- Rice choiceA short or medium grain rice gives the creamy body the dish depends on. Long grain stays separate and the pudding turns watery.
- The heat is the hingeForty minutes of slow cooking means the barest simmer with frequent scraping of the pan bottom. Coconut solids and sugar scorch readily, and once the bottom catches, the burnt taste runs through the whole pot. A heavy-bottomed pan and a flame lower than seems necessary.
- Adding the egg"Crack in one fresh egg, stir while heating for one minute" will curdle if the pan is at a boil. Pull it off the heat, beat the egg in a cup with a few spoonfuls of the hot rice, then return the mixture to the pan over low heat and stir for the minute specified.
- Vanilla whipped creamCream whipped to soft peaks with a little sugar and vanilla. Fold it in off the heat and away from the burner, or it deflates into the pudding and the point is lost.
- Yield and servingRoughly four to six servings. It is best warm or barely cool; refrigerated overnight the rice firms and the folded cream weeps, so it is worth making the day it is eaten.
Rice boiled in milk and sweetened is one of the oldest sweet dishes in European cookery, and the French form, riz au lait, was a plain, reliable pudding of the professional repertoire. This version substitutes coconut liquid and grated coconut meat for part of the dairy, at a period when whole coconuts had become a familiar grocery item in American and European cities rather than a curiosity. Cookbooks of this period regularly collected such adaptations under headings promising the cuisines of other nations, though the technique here, right down to the egg enrichment and the folded-in whipped cream, follows French restaurant practice.