Always cook rice with plenty of salt; it is insipid without it. It is sometimes cooked in a steamer, with milk, without stirring it; although it is more quickly cooked by soaking it an hour or two, and then throwing it into salted boiling water in the brightest of saucepans. To half a pound of the rice use about five pints of water. Let it simmer about twenty minutes. Handle it carefully, not to break the kernels.

Rice-pudding.

This receipt makes one of the plainest and best puddings ever eaten. It is a success where every grain of rice seems lying in a creamy bed.

Ingredients: One cupful of boiled rice (better if just cooked, and still hot), three cupfuls of milk, three-quarters of a cupful of sugar, a table-spoonful of corn starch, two eggs; add flavoring.

Dissolve the corn starch first with a little milk, and then stir in the remainder of the milk; add the yolks of the eggs and the sugar beaten together. Now put this over the fire (there is less risk of burning in a custard-kettle), and when hot add the hot rice. It will seem as if there were too much milk for the rice; but there is not. Stir it carefully until it begins to thicken like boiled custard, then take it off the fire, and add the flavoring, say, extract of lemon. Put it into a pudding-dish, and place it in the oven. Now beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and add a little sugar and flavoring. Take the pudding from the oven when colored a little, spread the froth over the top, and return it to the oven for a few minutes to give the froth a delicate coloring.

Rice-cones.

Mold boiled rice, when hot, in cups which have been previously dipped in cold water; when cold, turn them out on a flat dish, arranging them uniformly; then with a tea-spoon scoop out a little of the rice from the top of each cone, and put in its place any kind of jelly. Just before serving, pour in the bottom of the dish hot brandy-sauce. For a change, it is well to boil a stick of cinnamon in the rice to flavor it.

Rice-cake, with Peaches.

When some rice is cooked in a steamer with milk, and is still hot, add a little butter, sugar, and one or two eggs. Butter a plain pudding-mold, strew the butter with bread-crumbs, and put in a layer of rice half an inch thick; then a layer of peaches, and continue alternate layers of each until the mold is full. Bake this for about fifteen or twenty minutes in an oven; when done, turn the cake out of the mold, and pour in the bottom of the dish a boiled custard-sauce flavored with wine, or any thing preferred.

Rice-cake, with Pine-apple.

Prepare rice as above. Cut the pine-apple into dice, and boil them in sirup (water and sugar boiled ten or fifteen minutes); drain and mix them in the rice. Butter a plain pudding-mold or basin, and strew it with bread-crumbs; put in the rice and pine-apple, and bake it; when done, turn it out of the mold, and pour around it a sauce made as follows: Peel three large apples, and cook them in one pint of sirup sweetened to taste. When the apples are quite soft, strain them through a sieve, and mix this sirup with that in which the pine-apple was cooked; boil, or reduce it until it coats the spoon.

Ground Rice-pudding, with Chocolate Sauce.

Steam one quarter of a pound of ground rice and one pint of cream a quarter of an hour, then flavor it with vanilla; add one ounce of butter, the yolks of four eggs, let it cool, and beat it for half an hour; beat up the whites of the eggs to a froth, which mix in gently. Steam it a quarter of an hour. Serve it with half a pint of boiled custard, having one ounce of soaked and mashed chocolate stirred well into it, poured into the bottom of the dish.

Orange Snow-balls (Mrs. Acton).

Boil some rice for ten minutes, drain, and let it cool. Pare some oranges, taking off all the thick white skin; spread the rice in as many portions as there are oranges, on some pudding or dumpling cloths. Tie the fruit (surrounded by the rice) separately in these, and boil the balls for an hour; turn them carefully on a dish, sprinkle over plenty of sifted sugar. Serve with any kind of sauce or sweetened cream.

Apple Snow-balls.

Pare and core some large apples without dividing them. Prepare the rice as in the foregoing receipt; inclose the apples separately in it, and boil them three-quarters of an hour.

Sauce.—A little butter and sugar mixed to a cream; a spoonful of corn starch cooked in two cupfuls of boiling water; flavoring of cinnamon. To mix, see Sweet Sauces.

Rice SoufflÉ.

Ingredients: Half a cupful of rice, one even cupful of sugar, one pint of milk, butter the size of a butter-nut, half a lemon, five eggs.

Throw the rice into boiling salted water, and let it boil for ten minutes. Then put it into a stew-pan with the milk, butter and sugar, and set this to simmer very slowly for about half an hour, when the rice should be very soft (or the pan can be placed in a vessel of boiling water, or in a steamer). If it is placed directly on the range, much care should be taken not to let it burn. Now work the rice, etc., with a wooden spoon until it is a smooth paste; add the yolks of the eggs beaten to a perfect froth, and a lump of loaf sugar (mashed) which has absorbed all the oil out of the rind of the whole lemon (called zest); add also the juice of half of the lemon. If the rice is now too firm, add a little cream also. When cold, stir into this the whites of the eggs beaten to the stiffest possible froth, and put the mixture into a flat pudding-dish, or into little paper cases (see page 61). Sprinkle granulated sugar over the top or tops. Bake in the oven about ten minutes. Serve immediately, or the soufflÉ will fall. Ground rice may be used instead of whole rice. It should be rubbed smooth with a little cold milk, and then added to the remainder of the milk and the butter on the fire, and stirred until it thickens. It is then taken off the fire, sweetened, and flavored; the beaten yolks and then the beaten whites are stirred in quickly, and the sugar is sprinkled over the top, when all is put into the oven.

Rice Croquettes.

Ingredients: To half a pound of rice, one quart of milk, one tea-cupful of sugar, a very little butter, yolks of one or two eggs beaten, flavoring, and a little salt.

Soak the rice three or four hours in water; drain, and put into a basin with the milk and salt. Set the basin in the steamer, and cook until thoroughly done. Then stir in carefully the sugar, the yolks of one or two eggs, very little butter, and flavor with extract of lemon or vanilla. If fresh lemon is used, add a little zest. When cool enough to handle, form into small balls; press the thumb into the centre of each; insert a little marmalade, or jelly of any kind, and close the rice well over them. Roll in beaten eggs (sweetened a little), and bread-crumbs. Fry in boiling-hot lard.

Rice Pancakes, with Preserves.

Make the pancakes (see page 70), and while hot spread them with butter, and with almost any kind of preserve or jelly; roll them, cut off the ends, arrange them tastefully on a hot platter, sprinkle sugar over the tops, and serve immediately.