Carolina Gold Rice

The most famous culinary ingredient ever produced in South Carolina, Carolina Gold Rice, provided the base for many classic dishes: Hoppin’ John, Chicken Bog, Pilau/Perloo, Rice Bread, Rice Pudding, Rice Waffles, and Puffs. A non-aromatic subtropical japonica rice, it won fame for its pearly translucence, its wholesome mouth feel, and its versatility as a matrix upon which to mix flavors. It has existed in several forms over the centuries. The standard grain was the shortest of all of the varieties reckoned long grain in the United States at 5/16ths of an inch. Long Gold, a variant discovered in the mid-1840s at Brookgreen Plantation, was truly a long grained rice; it won gold medals at expositions in Paris and London in the 1850s and commanded the highest price of any variety on the world rice market in Paris. Carolina White was an out-mutation of Carolina Gold with a straw colored rather than golden hull; polished it did not differ in taste or quality. Charleston Gold was an aromatic and short-stature agronomic off-spring of Carolina Gold bred by Gurdev Kush and Merle Shepard early in the twenty-first century. Carolina Gold grew in commercial quantities in South Carolina from 1786 until the eve of the First World War. It was revived by Dr. Richard Schulze of Turnbridge Plantation in the 1980s. Its commercial restoration dates from the first decade of this century when Merle Shepard of Clemson University and Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills formed the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and had Dr. Anna McClung of the USDA breed Carolina Gold Select, the seed now planted in several southern states for culinary use.