Mix 1 cup of rice in 2 cups of milk; add 1 tablespoonful of butter, the yolks of 4 eggs, the juice of ½ lemon, 1 cup of sugar and nutmeg to taste, ½ cup of chopped raisins, ½ cup of nuts and the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Bake in a well-buttered pudding-dish until done. Serve cold.
November 11 — No. 11
Dutch
A baked rice custard written in the compressed style of a page-a-day book, which means several things a cook needs are left unsaid. Read the rice question first.
- Raw or cooked riceOne cup of rice to two cups of milk leaves almost nothing over for an egg custard once the sugar and eggs go in, and the grain is unlikely to come out tender. Safest treated as one cup of already-cooked rice, or cook the rice in milk (more of it, perhaps 3 cups) until tender before the eggs are added.
- Oven temperature"Until done" for an egg-set pudding means a moderate oven, 325-350F. Bake in a water bath if you want the edges as tender as the middle.
- How to tell it is doneThe custard is set at 170-175F at the centre; a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean while the middle still trembles slightly. Past 185F the eggs squeeze out water and the pudding weeps as it cools.
- Beaten whitesThe stiff whites are folded in last, off the heat, and the pudding goes straight into the oven. If the rice mixture is hot when they are added they collapse and you lose the light top the method is aiming for.
- Lemon and milkHalf a lemon's juice added to warm milk will curdle it if the milk is not first cooled and the juice not stirred in gradually. Add it to the egg yolks and sugar, then combine.
- SugarA full cup for this quantity is very sweet by current taste, and the raisins add more. Two-thirds of a cup gives a pudding that still sets and tastes of nutmeg and lemon.
- NutsUnspecified. Blanched almonds or walnuts both suit it; chop them fine so they do not sink through the custard.
- Yield and servingEnough for a 1.5-quart dish, six modest servings. It is meant to be served cold, so make it a day ahead and refrigerate; the flavour improves and it slices more cleanly.
Rice pudding in some form is common to most of Europe, and the "Dutch" label here reflects the organising conceit of the book -- one dish for each day of the year, each tagged with a country -- rather than any documented Netherlandish original, so that a reader working through November passes from an English layer cake to a Dutch pudding to Polish poached eggs. What marks this version as northern European rather than, say, a Middle Eastern rice pudding is the combination of egg yolks for richness, beaten whites for lift, and the grated nutmeg and lemon that were common flavourings of English and Dutch baked puddings by the eighteenth century. Nutmeg reached both countries through the Dutch East India Company's long control of the Banda Islands, which is often given as the reason nutmeg sits so deep in Dutch baking; rice, likewise, arrived as an imported luxury and only slowly became the cheap larder staple that made puddings like this an everyday dish.