Rice Cream
To a pint of new milk add a quarter of a pound of ground rice, a little lemon peel, three tablespoons powdered sugar, a lump of butter the size of a walnut. Boil them together for five minutes, then add half an ounce of isinglass which has been dissolved and let the mixture cool. When cool, add half a pint of cream whisk to a froth. Mix all together, and set it for a time in a very cool place, or on ice. When used turn it out into a dish and pour fruit juice around it. It may be served with sweetened cream. They are nice turned out in cups which have been wet with cold water.
A Victorian moulded cream, halfway between a blancmange and a cold rice pudding. Two things decide whether it works: constant whisking while the rice flour cooks, and folding the whipped cream in only when the base is properly cold.
- Ground riceThis is rice ground fine, not whole grains; it is close to modern rice flour, though period ground rice was often a little coarser. A quarter of a pound is about 115 g. It thickens like cornstarch and will catch on the bottom of the pan, so whisk without pause for the whole five minutes.
- Pint of new milk"New milk" simply means fresh whole milk, as opposed to milk that had stood and been skimmed. An imperial pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml); an American pint is 16 fl oz. The source's origin is not stated here, so either reading is possible.
- IsinglassA collagen setting agent made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, largely gone from domestic kitchens. Powdered gelatine is the modern stand-in, but strengths differed and half an ounce of isinglass has no reliable modern equivalent; work from the gelatine packet's own instructions for setting one and a half pints of liquid.
- DissolvedIsinglass was usually soaked and then heated in a little liquid until clear; modern gelatine should be softened in cold liquid and warmed gently rather than boiled. Stir it into the rice base while that base is still warm, or it will set in ribbons.
- Lemon peelPare the zest in wide strips with no white pith, steep it in the milk as it cooks, and fish it out before the mixture cools. Grated zest left in gives a gritty finish.
- A lump of butter the size of a walnutSomewhere between half an ounce and an ounce, one to two tablespoons; the equivalence was never fixed.
- Cool before the cream goes inThe base must be cold to the touch but not yet set, or the whipped cream will collapse and the dessert will be dense rather than light. Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold, do not beat.
- Setting and unmouldingFour hours in the refrigerator is a minimum; overnight is safer for a large mould. Wetting the cups with cold water, as directed, is what lets the cream slip out cleanly.
- YieldEnough for six small moulded cups, or one mould serving four to six. The fruit juice poured around is the sauce: a thin uncooked purée of raspberries or red currants suits it.
Rice cream belongs to the large Victorian family of moulded cold sweets that includes blancmange, flummery and Bavarian cream, all of which depend on a setting agent and a shape to turn out of. Isinglass, the agent here, was a prepared fish collagen imported largely from Russia and used both to clarify beer and wine and as a dessert staple, the two applications overlapping for centuries; it was expensive enough that recipe books measured it in fractions of an ounce, and commercial packet gelatine steadily displaced it through the later nineteenth century. Ground rice was the cheap thickener of the period, sold by every grocer and used in puddings, cakes and nursery food alike, so this recipe stretches a small quantity of costly cream with something anyone could afford. The instruction to serve it turned out of wetted cups points to the household without a set of tinned copper moulds.