[Sca-cooks] Rice question

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Fri, 30 Aug 2002, Daniel Myers wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> Having looked on the flori-thingy and other sites and not found a clear
> and easy answer, I post the question here:
>
> Is there any information as to the types of rice available in northern
> Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries?  (i.e. white rice vs. brown,
> long grain vs. short, etc...)
>
> When trying the Rys (Rice in Almond Milk) recipe[1] I used brown rice,
> and while it turned out quite well, the character of the dish would be
> changed completely with white rice.
>

Completely off the top of my head, I remember reading that polished white
rice was what medieval Europe was importing. Certainly there are a number
of dishes that are supposed to be white, that use rice or rice flour, that
would not be white if unpolished brown rice was used. There should be at
least one pottage in the Anglo-Norman corpus that contains rice and
specifies the color to be white.

I have no idea as to what variety would be correct--I myself prefer long
grain, so that is what I use.

Margaret