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GROUND RICE PUDDING (rich)
Mix two ounces of ground rice smoothly with four table-spoonfuls of thick cream. Add half a pint of new milk, which has been boiled, with an inch of cinnamon, or the rind of a lemon. Stir over the fire until the mixture thickens, and add two ounces of fresh butter, two ounces of sugar, and a tiny pinch of salt. Pour the pudding into a basin, and when cold, mix with it the yolks of three and the white of one egg, and a wine-glassful of sherry, or half a wineglassful of brandy. Put some apricot, or any other good jam, at the bottom of a buttered piedish, cover with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven. Sift a little pounded cinnamon, or pounded sugar, over the pudding before serving. This pudding may be eaten either hot or cold. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the jam and wine. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A stovetop rice-flour custard enriched with butter, egg and sherry, then baked over a layer of jam. The method is sound; only the vocabulary and the oven need translating.
- Ground riceThis is rice flour, milled fine but not as powdery as the starch sold as "rice starch" or "cream of rice." Two ounces is about 1/3 cup. Ordinary supermarket rice flour works; sweet (glutinous) rice flour does not, as it sets gummy.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, as opposed to milk that had stood and been skimmed. Half a pint here is the British half-pint, 10 fl oz, so use about 1 1/4 cups.
- Wine-glassfulIn late Victorian cookery books a wineglass is reckoned at 2 fl oz, a quarter of a cup. Half a wineglass of brandy is 1 fl oz.
- Let it go cold before the eggsThis is the instruction that matters. The thickened rice base is near boiling; yolks stirred into it hot will scramble and the pudding will bake grainy. Cool it to room temperature, or at least below blood heat, and stir the eggs in smoothly.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F/180C, though the book gives no figure. Twenty minutes suits a shallow pie dish; a deeper one will likely want longer, until the centre is just set with a slight wobble.
- Infusing the milkThe recipe says only that the milk has been boiled with the cinnamon stick or lemon peel; it gives no steeping time and does not mention straining, though the cinnamon or peel obviously has to come out before use. A short stand off the heat will give more flavour than boiling and immediate removal.
- Pounded sugarLoaf sugar crushed fine, which is caster or superfine sugar today. Granulated sifted over the top will not dissolve into the surface the same way.
- Jam layerA thin spread, two or three tablespoons, is enough. Too much and it boils up through the custard rather than staying as a base.
- YieldThree or four servings, as stated; a small pie dish is all that is needed. The recipe gives the one shilling costing as "exclusive of the jam and wine," so those two ingredients sit outside the figure.
Ground rice puddings gave a smoother, closer texture than one made with whole grains, since the flour thickens quickly. Rice flour became more common in British kitchens over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as rice imports grew, and cookery books of the period often print plain and "rich" versions of the same pudding side by side, the richer one adding cream, butter, extra yolks and a glass of wine. The habit of printing a probable cost is characteristic of household manuals aimed at readers managing a budget, and the pointed exclusion of the jam and the sherry from that figure suggests both were reckoned dearer than the milk and rice.