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Rizena Pudding
Rizena is a food preparation of rice. A pudding of this is made by mixing four large spoonfuls of rizena with half a pint of cold milk, and stir it into a quart of boiling milk until it boils again; then remove, stir in butter the size of an egg and a little salt; let it cool, and add four eggs, well beaten, two-thirds of a cup of white sugar, grated nutmeg, and half a wineglassful of brandy, or other flavoring if preferred; bake in a buttered dish twenty minutes. To be eaten hot, with sauce. It can hardly be said to be superior to rice. XIX. Miscellaneous Puddings.
A baked rice-flour custard from the era of branded "farinaceous foods." The original assumes you know what rizena is and how hot a pudding oven should be; neither is obvious now.
- RizenaApparently a trade-name rice preparation, essentially a fine rice flour or rice starch. Plain rice flour is the working substitute; cream of rice cereal behaves much the same in a milk pudding.
- The measurementsHalf a pint is one cup, a quart is four cups. "Butter the size of an egg" is about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Half a wineglassful of brandy is roughly 1 fl oz. "Four large spoonfuls" is genuinely vague — read it as four heaped tablespoons, around 1/3 cup of rice flour, and expect a soft set rather than a sliceable one.
- Slake before it meets heatThe cold-milk step is the hinge. Rice flour stirred dry into boiling milk seizes into lumps; mixed to a smooth slurry with the cold cup first, it thickens evenly.
- Cool before the eggs"Let it cool" means cool enough that the beaten eggs will not scramble on contact — below about 140F. Rushing this gives a grainy pudding no amount of baking will fix.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual for the period. 350F works as a modern setting for a custard of this kind. A dish set in a pan of hot water gives a smoother custard.
- Twenty minutes is optimisticThat timing suits a shallow dish and a pre-thickened base. In anything deeper, expect 30 to 40 minutes, and judge by a centre that is just set with a slight wobble rather than by the clock.
- Sauce and yield"With sauce" here means a sweet pudding sauce — hard sauce, a brandy or vanilla sauce, or thin cream. The quantity serves six to eight.
Rizena belongs to a crowded family of late-Victorian branded starches — cerealine, farina, corn starch, prepared groats — sold in packets as modern, digestible, labour-saving improvements on whole grain. Household cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s took up these products, and a compiler could open a recipe by explaining what the ingredient actually was. The closing line here is the most interesting part: "It can hardly be said to be superior to rice" is a flash of editorial scepticism, and it hints at why so few of these trade names survived while plain rice pudding did.