Into three pints of hot salted water, when at a fast boil, throw half a cupful of raw rice, previously washed and picked over. Keep it at a furious boil for twenty minutes, when test a grain to see if it is done. If it is soft, drain away every drop of water; set the uncovered pot at the back of the range for two minutes to dry off the rice, and serve. Not a spoon should touch it while cooking, and each grain should be whole and apart from the rest.
This, the one and only way to boil rice properly, is also the easiest. Shake the saucepan up three times while the rice is in cooking, to make sure it does not clog.
Pasty rice is as abhorrent to those who have eaten it cooked according to this recipe as sodden, gluey potatoes.
Serve in a hot, uncovered dish. Eat with butter, salt and pepper, and you will not regret the tyrant potato, should he fail to appear.
Buttered rice
Spread three cups of cold boiled rice upon a platter and set in the open oven that every grain may dry. Meanwhile, heat a little butter in the frying-pan and fry a sliced onion in it. When the slices are browned remove them with a perforated spoon, and lay the rice by the spoonful in the pan. Stir until each grain is coated with the butter; turn the rice into a heated colander, shake hard, and set at the side of the range for five minutes. Serve in a deep vegetable dish.
Rice croquettes
Boil as directed in first recipe; drain, and beat in two whipped eggs, half a cupful of milk (or cream if you have it), a little butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little mace, pepper and salt. Set by until perfectly cold, form into croquettes, roll in egg and fine crumbs, leave on ice for an hour and fry in boiling deep cottolene or other fat.
You can make the croquettes of cold boiled rice if you have it, but it is hardly as good for the purpose as the hot. The croquettes seldom have the consistency of those made up while the rice is hot.