{"id":9259,"date":"2019-11-23T12:32:50","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T17:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/?p=9259"},"modified":"2019-11-22T18:32:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T23:32:21","slug":"juliet-corsons-boiled-rice-dumplings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2019\/11\/23\/juliet-corsons-boiled-rice-dumplings\/","title":{"rendered":"Juliet Corson\u2019s Boiled Rice-Dumplings"},"content":{"rendered":"

This guest post is part of a continuing series written by students from Karen Metheny’s Cookbooks and History course. Ilana Hardesty details the challenge of making a historical recipe for boiled rice dumplings in a modern kitchen.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

19<\/b>th<\/b> Century Cooking in a 21<\/b>st<\/b> Century Kitchen<\/b><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be honest:\u00a0 there\u2019s only so far I can go in simulating 19<\/span>th<\/span> century cookery.\u00a0 I have a 21<\/span>st<\/span> century kitchen (literally; it was gutted and renovated, painfully, in 2017).\u00a0 I live in a city, so I can\u2019t build myself a wood-burning fireplace in which I can set things to the fire; I\u2019ve got a Bosch dual-fuel range.\u00a0 I won\u2019t be terribly successful with \u201cpounding\u201d my spices, as I don\u2019t own a mortar and pestle, and can\u2019t at the moment justify purchasing one for the purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Juliet Corson, Practical American Cookery and Household Management 1885<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the other hand, in terms of other responsibilities, I\u2019m pretty well equipped.\u00a0 At the moment I\u2019m nursing a husband with pneumonia, and fighting illness myself. I\u2019m doing laundry (granted, in my modern washer and dryer), cleaning, trying to keep ahead of the falling leaves in the yard, and thinking about the 15 people due at my house for Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks.\u00a0 Perhaps I should be making items from the \u2018caring for invalids\u2019 chapters so often found in historical cookbooks. I could use a strong cup of beef tea right about now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, I\u2019m trying Juliet Corson\u2019s \u201cBoiled Rice-Dumplings\u201d (Corson 1885, 463-464).\u00a0 I wanted to make a boiled pudding, thinking that would be a better simulation than something in my electric oven.\u00a0 And these dumplings seemed a bit out of the ordinary. Essentially, they\u2019re baked apples, except boiled, and with a rice \u201ccrust\u201d rather than pastry (sort of an early, sweet, boiled arancini?).\u00a0 I wanted to stay away from a pastry because I\u2019m terrible at making pastry even in 2019. I would surely fail an 1885 puff \u201cpaste!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The recipe calls for six apples to be cored and peeled, and flavored by adding \u201csugar and spices\u201d or \u201cany good jelly or marmalade\u201d into the tunnel left by the core.\u00a0 The apples are then wrapped in a layer of cooked rice, tied up in a \u201cpudding-cloth,\u201d and boiled for an hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Trial 1 (Monday)<\/b><\/p>\n

I assembled my ingredients, all purchased at the Watertown Stop & Shop.\u00a0 I did not need to pick over or wash my River\u00ae Rice, of course. Without a grain length specified, I went with medium grain rather than long grain (figuring medium grain would stick together better).\u00a0 The apples are locally grown. They are Cortlands \u2013 the smallest I could find; do they give apples growth hormones these days? \u2013 as a substitute for Pippins. I used cheesecloth as an approximation of \u201cpudding-cloth.\u201d\u00a0 I suspect I\u2019d have been better off sourcing muslin or sacrificing one of my kitchen towels to the cause. In this round, I went with the \u201csugar and spices\u201d option, and mixed up a bowl of white granulated sugar with pre-ground nutmeg and cloves (none of the recipes I looked at for any puddings called for cinnamon, but many called for nutmeg and cloves).<\/span><\/p>\n

I set the rice to \u201cboil fast for twenty minutes,\u201d then drained it \u201con a sieve\u201d (well, through a sieve, actually).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As that was happening I peeled and cored the apples.\u00a0 Did I take refuge in my OXO peeler and corer? Yes I did!!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then came the tricky part, where I was instructed to cover each apple with a half-inch thick layer of the cooked rice, somehow AFTER I\u2019d filled the core with sugar!\u00a0 Now I think of it, perhaps I was meant to have left the bottom of the apple intact. Instead, I devised an assembly that appeared would work, until it didn\u2019t. I spread a layer of rice on my cheesecloth, wide enough in diameter, I figured, to be pulled up around the apple when I cinched the cloth.\u00a0 Then I put the apple in the center of the rice, spooned in the sugar mixture, topped with more rice, and pulled together the corners of the cloth, to tie them tight around the rice-covered apple.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I ended up with only enough rice to make four, not six, apples.\u00a0 Did I use too much rice on each apple? It didn\u2019t seem that way. Are today\u2019s \u201csmall\u201d apples even too big for the recipe (which actually calls for medium apples)?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here they are, just after being put into the pot of boiling water.\u00a0 They float!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"There was no indication of what to do when they came out of the boiling water, so I set them on a rack to drain for a few minutes, and then gingerly opened one packet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Amazingly, they held together!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

And the verdict?\u00a0 They\u2019re odd. Not inedible, but not delicious.\u00a0 Perhaps I was expecting\/wanting something much more sweet and dessert-like.\u00a0 The rice got more gluey, and so held together. And, while I haven\u2019t investigated the science, I suspect the pectin in the apple helped it keep its shape during cooking as well, as happens with a regular baked apple.\u00a0 The texture is almost doughy, and the apple sort of melds with the rice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next time, I may try (and I know I\u2019m changing too many variables):<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Corson suggests adding an egg to the rice as a variant.\u00a0 This would also, I think, help the rice adhere to the apple and hold together.\u00a0 I might consider this.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • She also says to \u201cuse any good pudding-sauce with them.\u201d\u00a0 She has a variety of sauces in her Puddings chapter, any one of which would make the dumplings taste better.\u00a0 I will plan on making a sauce.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Try to spread the rice a bit thinner<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Use something a bit less open-weave than the cheesecloth I have<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Try a jelly or marmalade instead of the sugar and spices<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Trial 2 (Wednesday)<\/b><\/p>\n

    The cooking gods are evidently after verisimilitude.\u00a0 This morning, the coldest day since last winter, the furnace blew.\u00a0 So, no heat and a pneumonia-sufferer to keep warm. And also cooking to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

    This round was easier, since I\u2019d done it once, but no less fiddly.\u00a0 Who had the time to surround these apples in rice and wrap them in muslin??\u00a0 I made the recipe as written, and did not add the suggested egg. I used smaller apples, so managed to get five made this time around.\u00a0 Still not the six the recipe says I\u2019ll get, but closer. Also, after perusing modern recipes for baked apples, I did not use the apple corer this time.\u00a0 Instead, I used a paring knife to cut around the stem end, then used a small spoon to scrape out the core and seeds, while leaving the bottom of the apple intact.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    I cut up a cotton kitchen towel to use instead of cheesecloth, and that was easier to manipulate.\u00a0 I developed a process where I just mounded rice around the apple, and manipulated it into place as I pulled up the cloth around the apple.\u00a0 This time I tried a jelly \u2013 a homemade cranberry-apple sauce made with the leftover apples from Monday, sweetened with a bit of sugar and flavored with spiced boiled cider.\u00a0 I will not manage a pudding-sauce, though I know a good sauce makes <\/span>anything<\/span><\/i> taste better.<\/span><\/p>\n

    These were not, somehow, as aesthetically pleasing (perhaps the color of the cranberry sauce was to, um, visceral?).\u00a0 Also, the apples disintegrated a bit more this time. Though they apples were picked from the same bin, perhaps some other varieties ended up in the mix, and these did not hold their shape as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The verdict this time, from the class, was positive!\u00a0 We all agreed that this is not necessarily a dessert, but might be a nice sweet accompaniment to, for example, a roast pork dish, with a fruit-based sauce.\u00a0 There is work to be done in getting them out of their pudding-cloths intact, but it may be that the problems I had with that were because they had been cooled and then reheated.\u00a0 Perhaps the rice had a chance to fuse to the cloth more than if I\u2019d served them straight from the boiling pot.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Overall, this was a fascinating experience.\u00a0 I was hyper-aware of the conveniences that I have that Juliet Corson and her readers did not.\u00a0 But I was also hyper-aware of the cooking knowledge I have, and of my ability to infer and adapt with very little recipe detail.\u00a0 I look forward to taking on this challenge again with other recipes, for myself!<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Works Cited<\/b><\/h1>\n

    Corson, Juliet. 1885. <\/span>Practical American Cookery and Household Management.<\/span><\/i> New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This guest post is part of a continuing series written by students from Karen Metheny’s Cookbooks and History course. Ilana Hardesty details the challenge of making a historical recipe for boiled rice dumplings in a modern kitchen.\u00a0 19th Century Cooking in a 21st Century Kitchen Let\u2019s be honest:\u00a0 there\u2019s only so far I can go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,10,18,24,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9272,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9259\/revisions\/9272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}