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Rice, Vanilla
Wash and drain six ounces Carolina rice, place it in enamelled saucepan with a pint milk, three ounces sugar and one vanilla bean (from the sugar), lightly mix and let gently boil for twenty-five minutes, frequently stirring at bottom with wooden spoon meanwhile. Remove vanilla (place it in the sugar again), add two egg yolks and a gill cream to rice, sharply mix while heating for two minutes, dress on a compotier and serve.
A stovetop rice pudding, thickened at the end with yolks and cream rather than baked. A few of the terms and quantities need translating.
- Carolina riceA long-grain white rice associated with the South Carolina lowcountry, and frequently called for by name in period recipes; by this date the name was often used as much as a grade or type as a strict statement of origin. Any plain long-grain white rice works; do not use parboiled or instant, which will not release the starch that gives the dish its body.
- Weights and the gillSix ounces of rice is about a scant 1 cup by volume; three ounces sugar is about 6 to 7 tablespoons. A gill is a quarter of a pint -- 4 fl oz (half a cup) if the book is using US measure, 5 fl oz if imperial; the pint is 16 or 20 fl oz on the same reckoning.
- "From the sugar"The bean is assumed to be living in the sugar canister, a standard kitchen economy — one pod perfumes the sugar for months and is rinsed, dried and returned after each use. If you have no vanilla sugar, use a whole bean split lengthwise, or add a teaspoon of extract off the heat at the end.
- Enamelled saucepanAn unreactive surface, avoiding the discolouration a bare iron or unlined pan can give a milk and egg mixture. A heavy stainless or enamelled pan is right; the weight matters as much as the material, since milk and sugar scorch quickly.
- "Gently boil" means a bare simmerTwo cups of milk to a cup of rice is a tight ratio for 25 minutes. Keep it at the lowest possible bubble, stir across the bottom of the pan rather than through the middle, and have a little warm milk to hand if it tightens before the grains are tender.
- The hinge: the yolksTwo minutes of "sharp mixing while heating" is a custard thickening, not a boil. Once the yolks and cream go in, the mixture must not return to a simmer or it will curdle into grainy specks. Pull the pan off the heat if you see steam gathering, and keep stirring.
- CompotierA footed glass or porcelain dish for stewed fruit and creams. Any shallow serving bowl does; spread the pudding rather than mounding it so it cools evenly.
- Yield and servingEnough for four as a dessert. It is good warm, and sets firmer as it cools; if serving cold, press plastic wrap onto the surface to stop a skin forming.
Rice boiled in sweetened milk is one of the oldest sweet dishes in Europe, and by the early twentieth century versions of it were widespread — baked in some English households, moulded and turned out in others, as in the particular French preparation known as riz à l'impératrice. This one sits between the two: a plain stovetop rice finished with yolks and cream in the manner of a custard, then dressed in a compotier rather than a mould. The call for Carolina rice reflects a period when rice was often sold by growing region, and the instruction to return the vanilla bean to the sugar is a small window into pre-extract housekeeping, when a single pod was an investment to be dried and used again.