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Rice Pudding (Three pints milk four eggs one)
Three pints milk, four eggs, one cupful rice, one cup sugar, one cup raisins, one tablespoonful butter, a little salt. Wash rice until it is very white, then steam it in half the milk. When well steamed take the rest of the milk and the yolks of the eggs, butter, sugar and salt, and mix all well together. Butter a pan and bake. Then the whites of the eggs beat very stiff, add a few tablespoons of granulated sugar, spread it upon the pudding, after it is done, and brown it slightly.
A baked rice custard with a meringue cap, written for a cook who already knew how long a custard takes. The measurements are sound; the omissions are in the method.
- QuantitiesThree pints is 6 cups of milk to 1 cup of raw rice — a loose, spoonable pudding rather than a sliceable one. It fills a 3-quart baking dish and serves eight to ten.
- The raisinsThey are listed but never placed. Stir them into the custard mixture with the yolks and sugar, or scatter them over the steamed rice before the milk goes in so they do not all sink.
- Steaming the rice"Steam it in half the milk" means cook the rice gently in 3 cups of milk in a covered pan or double boiler until the grains are tender and the milk mostly absorbed, 25-30 minutes. Stir often; milk scorches on a direct flame far more readily than water.
- Washing until very whiteRinsing removes surface starch, and in the era of bulk-sold polished rice it also meant removing mill dust and the talc used in finishing. Modern rice needs only a rinse or two; skip it entirely if you want a thicker, creamier set.
- Oven temperatureBake at 325-350F. The unstated hinge is that this is a custard: above about 350F the eggs curdle and weep. A pan of hot water under the dish is cheap insurance.
- Judging it doneRoughly 45 minutes to an hour, until the centre is set but still trembles when nudged. A custard baked until firm all through will be grainy once it cools.
- The meringueFour whites take about 1/4 cup granulated sugar, added a spoonful at a time once soft peaks form. Spread it so it touches the rim of the dish all around, which keeps it from shrinking inward.
- "Brown it slightly"Ten minutes at 350F gives an evenly set meringue; two or three minutes under a broiler gives colour but leaves the interior soft. Watch it either way — the margin between pale gold and burnt is short.
Rice puddings of this shape belong to a long English line of sweetened milk-and-grain dishes that arrived in American cookbooks as thrift dressed up for company: the body is rice and milk, and the eggs, sugar and raisins turn it into dessert. The meringue cap suggests a later nineteenth-century version, when granulated sugar had become cheap and the leftover whites from a yolk-thickened custard could be beaten stiff and returned to the top of the same dish — the same economy behind lemon meringue pie and "queen of puddings." The instruction to wash the rice "until it is very white" points the same way, to a time when rice reached the household in bulk and often needed it.