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Raisin Pudding
Wash and dry 1 pound Sultana raisins; Crisco a pudding dish; put in a layer of boiled rice, over it a layer of raisins, and continue until the dish is nearly full, having rice on top. Beat 2 eggs; add 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 pinch of salt, 3 tablespoons melted Crisco, and 2 cups sweet milk; pour it over pudding, and bake 1/2 hour. Serve with liquid sauce.
A thrifty rice-and-custard pudding from a book written to sell Crisco, which is why the shortening appears twice where most cooks would have used butter. The original assumes leftover boiled rice and gives no oven temperature, so a few numbers need filling in.
- "Crisco a pudding dish"The brand name is used as a verb, meaning grease the dish. Any solid shortening or butter does the job; a 1 1/2- to 2-quart baking dish is the right size.
- How much riceNo quantity is given because the recipe assumes yesterday's rice. Layered with a pound of raisins in a 2-quart dish, roughly 3 cups of cooked, cooled rice fills it. Rice that is dry and separate layers better than freshly boiled, sticky rice.
- Sultana raisinsUsually sold today as golden raisins, or near enough for this purpose. A full pound is a great deal of fruit against 3 cups of rice; half that gives a more balanced pudding if you prefer.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that period recipes often called for.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A custard-based pudding wants a moderate oven, 350F. Higher and the egg mixture curdles and weeps around the rice.
- Baking timeHalf an hour may be optimistic for two eggs in two cups of milk, particularly in a deep dish. Bake until the custard is set at the edges and only slightly loose at the centre, which can take 40 to 50 minutes; a knife inserted an inch from the rim should come out clean.
- Sweetness and the sauceTwo teaspoons of sugar is almost nothing, and the pudding is meant to be barely sweet on its own. 'Liquid sauce' most likely means a thin pouring sauce rather than a hard sauce - vanilla, lemon or brandy would all suit - and it would carry most of the sugar. Serve it warm over each portion.
- YieldSix generous servings, or eight small ones after a full dinner.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble as promotional literature for Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening introduced in 1911. That accounts for the odd insistence here on greasing the dish with Crisco and melting three tablespoons of it into the custard, where an older English recipe would have said butter; the book's job was to demonstrate that the new fat could go anywhere butter or lard went. The pudding itself is much older than the shortening: baked rice with dried fruit and a milk-and-egg custard poured over is a standard nursery and economy dish of nineteenth-century Anglo-American cookery, valued because it used up cold boiled rice.