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Cream, Rice
Put a quart of new milk or cream into a saucepan with any flavouring that may be preferred; if lemon-rind, stick cinnamon, or bay-leaves, the milk should be left standing by the side of the fire a little while to draw the flavour. Mix two table-spoonfuls of ground rice with a little of the milk, and gradually with the whole of it. Add a well-beaten egg and stir the cream over a gentle fire till it thickens. Sweeten to taste, and serve in a glass dish as an accompaniment to fruit tart or stewed fruit. The cream should be stirred until cold to prevent a skin forming on the top. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for a quart of cream.
A stirred rice-flour custard, thinner than a blancmange and meant to be poured over fruit. It is simple, but two details decide whether it comes out silky or grainy and scrambled.
- The hinge: keep the heat low and never let it boilOnce the beaten egg goes in, the mixture must thicken below a simmer. Stir constantly over gentle heat until it coats the spoon; if it catches or boils, the egg curdles and the starch turns pasty.
- An imperial quartCassell's quart is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. If you scale down to 4 cups of milk, drop the ground rice to a scant 2 tablespoons and use the full egg.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, unskimmed and not soured. Whole milk works; the cream version is much richer and wants closer watching over the heat.
- Ground riceRice flour, milled slightly coarser than the modern superfine kind. Ordinary rice flour is fine and thickens a little faster; slurry it with cold milk first so it does not lump.
- Drawing the flavour"Left standing by the side of the fire" means infusing the milk hot but well off the boil for a while before proceeding; the lemon peel, cinnamon stick or bay is lifted out before the rice goes in. Bay is strong, so use it sparingly.
- Sweeten lastSugar is added after thickening, as written, so add it off the heat and taste warm. It will read less sweet cold, which is how it is served.
- Stirring until coldThe instruction is sound and prevents a skin, but it takes a long time by hand. A bowl set over ice, stirred occasionally, does the same job; pressing a sheet of film onto the surface also works.
- YieldRoughly a quart of sauce, as the recipe states, enough to pour over a tart or stewed fruit for a table of several. It thickens further overnight in the refrigerator; loosen with a little milk.
Ground rice was one of the cheap thickeners that let a Victorian household serve something called "cream" without much cream in it; Cassell's gives the probable cost as sixpence for a quart. English "creams" of this kind are often really stirred custards or milk puddings, a family that includes blancmange, flummery and the flour-thickened pastry creams of French confectionery. The flavourings named here are lemon peel, stick cinnamon and bay leaf; bay in milk sounds odd now but was a familiar British dairy infusion, and is sometimes said to lend a faint almond-like note. Serving it in a glass dish alongside fruit reflects the period habit of treating pouring custards as an accompaniment rather than a dessert in their own right.