To boil rice well, though a simple thing, is rarely well done. Have two quarts of water boiling, while you wash six ounces of rice, picked clean. Change the water three or four times. When the rice is clean, drain and put it into the boiling water. Boil twenty minutes; add three quarters of a table-spoonful of salt. Drain off the water well—this is the most essential point—set it before the fire, spread thin to dry. When dry, serve it up. If the rice is not dry, so that each grain separates easily from the others, it is not properly boiled.
Another way.
Put one pound of rice into three quarts of boiling water; let it remain twenty minutes. Skim the water, and add one ounce of hog’s lard and a little salt and pepper. Let it simmer gently over the fire closely covered, for an hour and a quarter, when it will be fit for use. This will produce eight pounds of savoury rice.
Rissoles. No. 1.
Take a roasted fowl, turkey, or pullet; pull it into shreds; there must be neither bone nor skin. Cut some veal and ham into large dice; put it into a stewpan, with a little thyme, carrots, onions, cloves, and two or three mushrooms. Make these ingredients simmer over a slow fire for two hours, taking care they do not burn; put in a handful of flour, and stir well, with a pint of cream and as much good broth; let the whole then stew for a quarter of an hour; continue to stir with a wooden spoon to prevent its burning. When it is done enough, strain it through a woollen strainer; then put in the whole meat of the poultry you have cut, with which you must make little balls of the size of pigeons’ eggs. Dip them twice in very fine crumbs of bread; wrap them in paste, rolled very thin; then fry them in lard, which should be very hot.
Rissoles. No. 2.
Take the fleshy parts and breasts of two fowls, which cut into small dice, all of an equal size; then throw them into some white sauce, and reduce it till it becomes very thick and stiff. When this is cold, cut it into several pieces, and roll them to the size and shape of a cork; then roll them in crumbs of bread very fine; dip them into some white and yolks of eggs put up together with a little salt, and roll them again in bread. If they are not stiff enough to keep their shape, this must be repeated; then fry them of a light brown colour, drain them, wipe off the grease, and serve them with fried parsley between them.
Rissoles. No. 3.
Take of the puré made as directed for pheasant, veal, or game, (see [Pheasant] under the head [Game]) a sufficient quantity for eight rissoles, then a little of the jelly of veal, say about half a pint; put in it a pinch of salt and of cayenne pepper, two table-spoonfuls of cream, the yolk of one egg, and a piece of butter of the size of a walnut; mix this sauce well together over the fire, strain it, and then add the puré. Let it cool, and prepare a little puff-paste sufficient to wrap the rissoles once over with it, taking care to roll the paste out thin. Fry them, and send them up with fried parsley, without sauce. The rissoles must be made stiff enough not to break in the frying.