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Chinese Way of Cooking Rice

A historical recipe from The Laurel Health Cookery A Collection of Practical Suggestions and Recipes for the Preparation of Non-Flesh Foods in Pa, by Evora Bucknum Perkins (1911).

A historical recipe

The Laurel Health Cookery A Collection of Practical Suggestions and Recipes for the Preparation of Non-Flesh Foods in Palatable and Attractive Ways, by Evora Bucknum Perkins (1911). Project Gutenberg eBook #43468.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

Source and licence

From The Laurel Health Cookery A Collection of Practical Suggestions and Recipes for the Preparation of Non-Flesh Foods in Pa, by Evora Bucknum Perkins (1911). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #43468 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43468). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

China. Associated with China by a demonym leading its title: Chinese (confidence 0.55). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

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Method

  1. After washing, put rice over the fire in double its bulk of cold water, let it boil up well, carefully lift cover to see if water is all absorbed;
  2. if not, drain, sprinkle salt over if desired (the Chinaman does not use it), return to fire closely covered and watch, listening until a faint crackling of parching grains at the bottom is heard;
  3. then remove to the back of the range where the rice will just steam--“steam fragrant.” When ready to serve, carefully stir the grain with a wooden skewer or some small round stick, when the snowy mass should crumble apart into indistinct kernels.
  4. “Try the Chinaman’s way and be convinced that plain boiled rice is a palatable, substantial food.”--Adapted from Mrs.
  5. J.
  6. N.
  7. Anderson, Canton, China, in “Life and Health.”