Riz à l'impératrice

Urbain Dubois (1864) writes at the end of his Rice Bread à l’Impératrice: “Rice à l’Impératrice also refers to a plombières rice mixture arranged in a dome-shaped mold in alternating layers with apricot marmalade, which is then beaten for 25 minutes on salted ice,” and further on he gives another frozen dessert: apricot bread à l’Impératrice.^[5] He is the first to mention this recipe.

Jules Gouffé (1873) is the author of the complete canonical recipe: he cooks his rice pudding in cream with a vanilla bean, cooking it for 1 hour in a bain-marie in the oven. He sautés a salpicon of almond, pear, apricot, greengage plum, and cherry with syrup and Maraschino. The rice is then frozen in a sorbetière, mixed with chantilly, and molded. He serves this rice with a cherry sauce.^[6] Gouffé had already given in 1867 a variant where he sets the rice with Italian meringue before freezing.^[7] Gustave Garlin (1889) adds to the fruits some raisins soaked in kirsch.^[8]

Phileas Gilbert (1893) mixes into the rice pudding a salpicon of candied fruit macerated in kirsch, apricot marmalade, and custard before freezing the whole. Afterwards, the recipe degenerates: Le Français (1880) publishes an easier recipe (rice cooked in milk, egg-based sauce with cherries and candied apricots), Le Petit Journal (1892) replaces the fruits with a handful of wild strawberries and sugar-coated raspberries — a garnish also found with Bertrand Guegan (1920) along with currants and raspberries — the Progrès de la Côte-d’Or (1896) binds the rice with gelatin soaked with candied fruit in kirsch, Le Figaro (1903) uses rice dried in milk, marzipan, apricot marmalade, while the Courrier de Saône-et-Loire (1926) makes a mixture of eggs, sugar, and milk, adds rice pudding without freezing, kirsch, and apricot jam.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

Marie-Hélène Baylac writes that the origin of the name “rice à l’impératrice” is debated: some say rice à l’impératrice was created in 1810 for Empress Marie-Louise, while others claim it was in 1860 for Empress Eugénie.^[14] The first mention in a menu and in print of rice à l’impératrice is in La Gironde  [fr]: on 9 February 1869 it was reportedly served as an entremets at a banquet of lawyers of the bar of Bordeaux.^[15]

Urbain Dubois and Jules Gouffé were cooks for Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie de Montijo.^[16]

"I was as incapable of deciding which I would prefer, as if, for dessert, I had been given the choice between rice à l'impératrice and chocolate cream." — Marcel Proust.^[17][18]

“Let us put down a layer of cream, then a layer of rice pudding, then a layer of candied fruits cut into pieces in the sorbetière, and alternate the layers until the sorbetière is full. Then we will bury it in ice for 2 hours, unmold it, and obtain a magnificent rice à l’impératrice! (It is not a dietetic preparation, but it is much appreciated by healthy people).” — La cuisine rationnelle des malades et des bien portants. Augusta Moll-Weiss. Paris, Octave Doin. 1907.^[19]

Urbain Dubois. La cuisine classique: études pratiques, raisonnées, et démonstratives de l'école française appliquée au service à la russe. Paris, Librairie E. Dentu. Cruel et Fayard Frères. 1864, 547 p. (recipe no. 1912)

Jules Gouffé. Le livre de pâtisserie. Paris. Hachette. 1873, 506 p. (rice à l’impératrice: page 415)

Jules Gouffé. Le livre de cuisine: comprenant la cuisine de ménage et la grande cuisine. Paris. Hachette. 1867, 826 p. (rice à l’impératrice: page 751)

Gustave Garlin. Le pâtissier moderne: suivi d'un traité de confiserie d'office. Paris. Garnier. 1889, 997 p. (rice à l’impératrice: page 500)

Philéas Gilbert. La cuisine de tous les mois. Paris, Abel Goubaud 1893, 710 p. Numerous reprints.

Auguste Escoffier. Le guide culinaire, aide-mémoire de cuisine classique. Paris, Aux Bureaux de l'Art Culinaire, 1903, 792 p. (rice à l’impératrice: page 734)

Bertrand Guégan. La fleur de la cuisine française. Paris, ed. de la Sirène. 1920.^[20]