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Orange Rice Pudding
One cup rice, washed in three or four waters until white, one coffee cup milk, one coffee cup water; steam the rice in the milk and water. When done add the yolks of three eggs well beaten, two tea cups sugar, the juice and grated rind of three oranges and one lemon. Mix well and bake. When done beat the whites of the eggs stiff, add two tablespoons sugar, then brown it in the oven for a few minutes. No sauce required.
A late-Victorian rice pudding built on citrus rather than spice, finished with a meringue instead of a sauce. The original assumes you know how long to bake a custard and how hot to make the oven, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- Cup measuresA coffee cup is roughly 1 cup (some period books treat it as a generous cup, up to 1 1/4); a teacup is smaller, about 3/4 cup. So the rice steams in about 1 cup milk and 1 cup water, and "two tea cups sugar" is around 1 1/2 cups.
- That much sugarA cup and a half of sugar to a cup of raw rice is very sweet by current taste, and the citrus is already sharp. Two-thirds to one cup gives a pudding that still sets and still reads as dessert.
- Steaming the riceTwo cups of liquid to one cup of rice is on the tight side if you want grains soft enough for a pudding rather than merely tender. Cook it covered over low heat, or in a double boiler, until the grains are soft and the liquid absorbed; add a splash more milk if it tightens before the rice is tender.
- Add the juice last, off the heatThis is the hinge. Three oranges and a lemon are enough acid to curdle hot milk. Let the rice mixture cool until it is warm rather than steaming, temper the beaten yolks into it, then stir in the sugar, zest and juice just before it goes into the dish.
- Oven temperatureBake at 325-350F in a buttered dish until the centre is just set and no longer soupy, roughly 35-45 minutes depending on depth. A water bath is not required but keeps the edges from tightening.
- Browning the meringueBeat the three whites to stiff peaks with the two tablespoons sugar, spread to the edges of the dish so it seals, and return it to a hot oven, about 400F, for 5-8 minutes until the peaks colour. "A few minutes" at custard temperature will not brown it.
- ZestGrate only the coloured outer peel of the oranges and lemon; the white pith underneath turns the pudding bitter. Citrus varies a good deal in size and sharpness, so taste before committing all four rinds.
- YieldServes six to eight from a 1 1/2-quart dish. Good warm; the meringue weeps if it sits overnight in the refrigerator.
Rice puddings run through nineteenth-century American cookbooks in dozens of forms, from plain baked rice and milk to elaborate moulded creams, and they earned their place by being cheap, filling and made from staples that kept. What marks this one as a dessert rather than a nursery dish is the citrus: oranges and lemons were dearer in much of the country before improvements in rail transport made Florida and California fruit more widely available, so a pudding that spends four whole rinds is quietly showing off. The meringue lid also uses up the whites left from a yolk-thickened custard, an economy that may help explain why a number of recipes of the period end in browned egg white rather than a poured sauce. The instruction to wash the rice "in three or four waters until white" likely reflects rice as it was then sold, often milled less thoroughly and scooped from bulk barrels.