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GERMAN PUDDING, RICE (excellent)
Stew a quarter of a pound of the best Carolina rice in a pint of milk, till it is very tender and dry; let it cool, then mix with it a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, two ounces of sweet almonds, blanched and pounded, three table-spoonfuls of sifted loaf sugar, three ounces of stoned raisins, half a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon, and the yolks of three eggs. Add each ingredient separately, and mix thoroughly. Butter a mould, and, just before pouring the mixture in, add the whites of the eggs, beaten to a solid froth. Cover with buttered paper, tie in a cloth, and boil. Turn out, and serve with German pudding sauce (see GERMAN PUDDING SAUCE). Boil an hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A rich boiled rice pudding, closer to a moulded dessert than a nursery bowl of rice. The essentials translate cleanly; the cooking vessel and method need the most thought.
- The hinge: cool the rice firstThe rice must be genuinely cold before the butter and yolks go in, or the yolks will scramble and the butter will pool out. Spread it on a plate to cool rather than leaving it in the hot pan.
- Carolina riceA long-grain white rice, historically from the Carolina Lowcountry and frequently called for by name in English pudding recipes of the period. Any plain long-grain white rice works; avoid parboiled or basmati.
- Weights and measuresA quarter pound is 4 oz (about 115 g) each of rice and butter; two ounces of almonds is roughly 55 g, three ounces of raisins about 85 g. The pint is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz or 570 ml, so the rice absorbs a good deal of liquid.
- Loaf sugar, siftedLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a cone and crushed at home; sifted, it is the equivalent of caster sugar. Three tablespoons is about 40 g — this is a modestly sweet pudding relying on the raisins and the sauce.
- Sweet almonds, pounded"Sweet" simply distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which the Victorians used for flavouring. Blanched whole almonds ground fine in a processor give the right texture; ready-ground almonds are drier but acceptable.
- Boiling in a clothA buttered mould, covered with buttered paper and tied in a cloth, was designed to be lowered into a pot of boiling water. A covered pudding basin in a steamer or a large lidded pan with water halfway up the sides does the same job. Keep the water at a steady simmer and top it up with boiling water so it never falls below the mould.
- Mould size and timingSufficient for five or six means roughly a 1½-pint (850 ml) basin, filled no more than three-quarters full to allow the whisked whites room to rise. An hour and a half is right for that size; a smaller mould will be done sooner and should be tested with a skewer.
- Folding the whitesThe whites go in at the last moment, immediately before the mixture is poured into the mould. Fold, do not beat, and get the pudding into the water at once — the aeration is the only lift this pudding has.
- The cost lineOne shilling and twopence is the late-Victorian household price for the whole pudding, given so a cook could budget. It has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the English boiled pudding, when a buttered mould tied in a cloth and lowered into a copper of water was the most reliable dessert a kitchen without a dependable oven could produce. The "German" label attached to a number of Victorian puddings served with a wine-and-egg sauce — the cross-referenced German pudding sauce — of a kind known in Germany as Weinschaumsauce and comparable to Italian zabaglione. Carolina rice, named in the recipe as a matter of course, was a quality benchmark in British kitchens for much of the nineteenth century, though British supply drew increasingly on Asian sources as the century went on.