Orange Rice

I don’t know how to categorize this orange rice. Is it a side dish? Dessert? In my great-grandma’s handwritten recipe book, she put this under the sparse “vegetables” section. While I understand that likely reflects their lack of access to fresh vegetables, by our modern sensibilities that’s just not how we would define it. I’m going to call it a side dish with a hefty dose of shrugging accompanying that decision. This is a dish that defies categorization.

Initial thoughts on the recipe

I’ll admit, I was completely baffled by this recipe. Aside from the fact that it was likely just a way to get calories in meager times, I really just wondered how they thought to combine orange with rice. Like, am I overreacting here, or is this bizarre?

Then I realized that I enjoy having mangoes and sticky rice as dessert when I eat Thai food, so the idea of sweet, fruity rice isn’t exactly uncharted territory. Also rice pudding is a thing, so again, not actually that weird. Maybe it’s just the “vegetable” categorization that’s weirding me out.

Trying it out

In the search for something comparable, I’ll admit I googled “orange rice 19th century.” Unsurprisingly, nothing relevant came up. This seems to be an invention bred out of necessity, rather than a reflection of the food trends of the time.

The recipe is scant on details for the orange sauce. It simply says to “have ready sauce made from the juice of 2 oranges and sugar to taste.”

This kind of thing is both the joy and the challenge of historical recipes — sometimes, you have to figure out how to fill in the gaps.

Because the sauce contains only 2 ingredients, it’s pretty similar to your basic simple syrup that you cook and reduce. The part I was most unsure of was how much sugar to include. After consulting the internet and a few key recipes, I came to the conclusion that about 1/4 cup of sugar should do the trick. Now that I’ve tasted the dish, I think that still stands. Any more would likely be too sweet.

As for the kind of rice to use, I’m not sure that it matters — at least, not in the spirit of the dish. It seems to me like a meal to get nutrients from what you have on hand, so the exact variety of rice or oranges wasn’t relevant information. I made this while isolating during the COVID-19 lockdown and have been limiting trips to the grocery store, so I used what I had on hand: jasmine rice. I’m curious how much of a difference other kinds of rice would — or wouldn’t — make.

The verdict:

I’ve tried this rice several ways (this recipe makes about 4 decent “side dish” size servings), and I think it works in all of them.

As a standalone dish, this rice tastes simply like sweetened, sticky rice with just a hint of citrus. That very slight orange taste makes it an interesting — though not necessarily accurate — accompaniment to Chinese food (I used it to spread out some leftover takeout). I’ve also eaten it warmed up with some sweetened condensed milk poured over the top as a mild dessert; I think that was my favorite way of all. Since the addition of sweetened condensed milk is not exactly accurate to the recipe as it was written, I’m omitting that from the official recipe card.

Overall, I’d say I liked it…but I wouldn’t say I love it. I’d give it a 3.5/5.

If you try this dish, I’d love to know your thoughts. How would you categorize it? What did you eat alongside it?