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GROUND RICE CHEESECAKES (plain)
Mix two ounces of ground rice smoothly with a little cold milk, and pour on it a pint of boiling milk. Put it into a saucepan, with one ounce of butter, a tiny pinch of salt, the rind of a lemon, and a little sugar. Stir the mixture over the fire for five or six minutes, until it thickens, then pour into a basin, and when cold add two well-beaten eggs. Line some pattypans with a good crust, three-parts fill them with the mixture, strew a few currants over, and bake in a quick oven for about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for about two dozen cheesecakes.
A rice-thickened custard baked in small pastry cases. The name is traditional English usage: there is no cheese in it, and none is intended.
- Cool the base before the eggsThis is the hinge. Two beaten eggs stirred into a hot rice cream will curdle into threads. Let the mixture go properly cold, then beat the eggs in until the filling is smooth and pourable.
- Ground riceMilled rice, sold as ground rice or (at a slightly finer grind) rice flour; either will serve here, though the coarser "cream of rice" cereal needs slackening with extra milk. Slurry it with cold milk first, as directed, or it lumps the moment the boiling milk hits it.
- Lemon rindPare the rind in wide strips with a peeler, no white pith, and lift it out before the mixture cools and sets. The recipe never says to remove it, but it is there to infuse, not to be eaten.
- "A little sugar"Genuinely unspecified. For a pint of milk, 2 to 3 tablespoons gives a lightly sweet filling; up to 1/4 cup if you want it closer to a modern tart.
- Pattypans and crustSmall shallow tart or bun tins, generally smaller and shallower than a standard 12-cup muffin cup; the yield of two dozen from a pint of milk implies small cases. "A good crust" is most simply read as a shortcrust; roll it thin and line the cups, filling them only three-quarters full, as the recipe directs, so the custard does not overflow as it puffs.
- Quick ovenNo temperature is given; "quick oven" is usually taken as roughly 400 to 425F. Twenty minutes at that heat should set the custard and colour the pastry; the filling should be just set with a faint wobble at the centre.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. A scant teaspoon scattered over each cake is plenty.
- Units and yieldA pint here is the British 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups; 2 oz ground rice is roughly 1/3 cup, and 1 oz butter is 2 tablespoons. Two dozen small cakes as written, or about 12 to 14 in a standard muffin tin.
English "cheesecakes" of this sort were small filled pastries rather than the tall baked cheese confections the name suggests today, and by the Victorian period many contained no cheese at all: the original curd filling had been steadily replaced by almond, lemon, or starch-thickened custards, and the old name simply stayed with the shape. The recipe is marked "plain," and the ground rice does the work that ground almonds or curd would otherwise do, thickening the milk cheaply and giving the filling body. Sixpence for two dozen tarts marks this out as an economical teatime bake built on pantry staples rather than an occasion dish.