Rice: Overview: Rice Cookery

Prior to the eighteenth century, English cooks knew little about cooking rice, as few recipes had appeared in manuscripts or cookbooks. When rice began to be imported into England, cooks incorporated it into traditional recipes. Hence rice was used to make gruels and puddings and later bread and pastries. British cookbooks published or sold in America included recipes with rice as an ingredient. For instance, The Compleat Housewife (1742) by E. Smith, the first cookbook published in America, includes a recipe “To make a Poloe” (pilaf). The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse offers at least twenty-one recipes with rice as an ingredient, including nine for pudding, four for pilaf, and recipes for soup, curry, and pancakes. While an edition of this cookbook was not published in America until the nineteenth century, so many copies were sold or brought over from England that The Art of Cookery was one of America’s most popular cookbooks during the colonial period. These cookbooks do not necessarily reflect American practice, although recipes published in British books were titled Carolina Rice Pudding and To Make Carolina Snow-balls.