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Gooseberry and Rice Pudding
Wash half a pound of best Carolina rice. Put it into a cloth, which has been dipped in hot water and floured, and lay on it a pint and a half of green gooseberries, picked and washed. Tie the cloth securely, leaving plenty of room for the rice to swell, and boil for an hour and a half. Serve it with sweet sauce. Probable cost for this quantity, 6d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A boiled cloth pudding of the old school: raw rice and raw fruit tied up together and dropped into a pot, the rice swelling to enclose the gooseberries as they collapse into a sharp green purée. The single thing that decides success is how loosely you tie the cloth.
- Leave the rice roomHalf a pound of raw rice will roughly triple in volume. Tie the cloth so the contents can move freely and expand — a tight bundle will burst, or leave a core of hard grains at the centre.
- The floured clothDipping the cloth in hot water and dusting the inside with flour creates a paste seal that keeps water out and starch in. Use a clean, unbleached cotton or linen cloth about 20 inches square, and flour the wet surface generously.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pound of rice is about 1¼ cups (225 g). A pint and a half of gooseberries is imperial measure, so nearer 3½ cups, and somewhere in the region of a pound (450 g) of fruit.
- "Best Carolina rice"In Victorian Britain 'Carolina' served largely as a trade name for high-quality long-grain rice rather than a strict variety; the historic Carolina Gold has since been revived by specialist growers. Any plain long-grain rice works, though a medium-grain such as Arborio or pudding rice gives a softer, more cohesive pudding.
- BoilingSubmerge the bundle in a large pot of hard-boiling water and keep it at a rolling boil for the full hour and a half, topping up with boiling water so the pudding is never exposed. A plate or trivet on the pot floor stops the cloth scorching.
- Green gooseberriesThese are unripe fruit, deliberately acidic. Frozen gooseberries work; if you cannot find them, an equal weight of tart green plums or rhubarb gives a similar effect, though neither sets the same way.
- The sweet sauce is not optionalThere is no sugar anywhere in the pudding. Without a sweet sauce — melted butter beaten with sugar, a thin custard, or a sugar-and-lemon syrup — the result is genuinely austere.
- Turning out and servingLift the bundle, let it drain a minute, then untie and invert onto a warmed dish; it will slump slightly. Six to seven servings as the original states, best eaten hot.
Boiled pudding in a cloth was the backbone of English domestic sweets from the seventeenth century onward, and it survived into Victorian cookery books precisely because it needed no oven — just a pot on the range, which every kitchen had. Gooseberries were the great early-summer English fruit, picked hard and green in May and June for tarts, fools and puddings well before they were sweet enough to eat raw, and a household with a bush had more than it could use. The "best Carolina rice" of the instruction reflects the period's trade rather than any modern variety: rice from the South Carolina Lowcountry was sold in Britain as a premium grade through the nineteenth century, and the name lingered as a byword for quality long after the industry itself declined. A costing of sixpence for six or seven persons says most of what needs saying about its purpose — a cheap, filling, fruit-bearing pudding built from a pantry staple and whatever the garden was producing.