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Rice Pudding Au Nectar
Boil four ounces rice in boiling water for five minutes, thoroughly drain on a sieve, then place it in saucepan with a pint milk, half teaspoon vanilla essence, the rind of a mandarin and three ounces sugar. Lightly mix and let slowly boil for forty minutes, remove the rind, then add half gill honey, two gills cream and four egg yolks. Sharply mix with the spatula for three minutes, transfer the rice to a baking dish, sprinkle two tablespoons shredded cocoanut over the rice, set it in the oven for twenty minutes, remove and serve in the same dish, either hot or cold.
SVEZHSA SHTCHEE (SOUP) Place a three-pound piece short rib of beef in a saucepan with five quarts water and a level teaspoon salt, cover the pan, and boil for thirty minutes, skimming the fat off once in a while. Cut half of a very small head of cabbage, cored and trimmed, in small pieces, plunge into boiling water for five minutes, then drain on a sieve and add to the soup, with two medium, sliced carrots and two medium, sliced onions. Cover the pan and let simmer for three hours. Take up the beef and keep it on a plate, skim the fat from the surface of the soup. Knead on a plate an ounce butter with one and a half ounces flour and gradually add to the soup, continually mixing meanwhile. Then pour in one gill cream and two tablespoons vinegar. Mix well with a wooden spoon, boil for two minutes, pour into a soup tureen and serve. N. B. Remove bones and trim off fat from the boiled beef, then envelop in a clean, coarse towel and lightly tie both sides, press between two boards place a four-pound weight on top and keep in a cool place until to-morrow's lunch.
A baked rice pudding enriched at the last minute with honey, cream and yolks. Note that the page runs two recipes together: the pudding ends at "either hot or cold," and everything after SVEZHSA SHTCHEE is a separate cabbage-and-beef soup.
- The hinge: temper the yolksFour yolks go into rice that has just come off a forty-minute boil, and the book says only to mix sharply for three minutes. Pull the pan from the heat first and stir a ladle of the hot rice into the yolks before returning them, or the eggs will set into threads before the pudding reaches the dish.
- Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of honey is 1/4 cup and two gills of cream is one cup. The pint of milk is 2 cups by US measure; if you are working from a British edition, a pint there is 20 fl oz, which makes a noticeably looser pudding.
- Four ounces riceWeight, not volume: about 1/2 cup plus a spoonful of raw grains. A short or medium grain (arborio, pudding rice, Calrose) gives the creaminess the method assumes; long-grain stays separate and thin.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is specified. Treat it as a moderate oven, 350F, for the twenty minutes; the pudding is already cooked and is only setting the custard and toasting the coconut. Hotter and the yolks curdle at the edges.
- Mandarin rindPare it in strips with a peeler, coloured zest only, and use an unwaxed fruit. The whole strip is fished out before the honey goes in, so size it to be findable.
- Cocoanut"shredded cocoanut" of this period was often the plain dried kind rather than today's sweetened bagged flake, though sweetened packaged coconut was also on sale. Sweetened flake will scorch in a 350F oven and pushes an already sugary pudding over the edge; unsweetened desiccated coconut is the safer reading.
- Slow boil, forty minutesA pint of milk to four ounces of rice over forty minutes means a bare tremble with regular stirring, and a heavy pan. Left to a real boil it will catch on the bottom well before the time is up.
- YieldServes four to six as written. Bake it in a shallow dish about 8 inches across so the coconut layer stays thin.
- On the soup that followsThe instruction to press the boiled beef under a weight and keep it "in a cool place until to-morrow's lunch" assumes a cold larder. Cooked beef needs refrigeration below 40F, and the pressing should be done in the fridge.
The International Cook Book was assembled to give American households a tour of national dishes, and this pairing on one page shows the method: a French-hotel dessert set against a Russian soup. The pudding's name reads as the menu French often associated with the Escoffier era, au nectar apparently signalling the honey rather than any particular tradition, and the technique is straight out of a professional kitchen, with rice blanched for five minutes instead of going straight into the milk o wal, to wash off surface starch before it goes into milk is presumably the point.