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Lemon Rice
Put the rind of a lemon, an ounce of butter, three table-spoonfuls of sugar, five or six bruised almonds, and a pint and a half of milk into a saucepan. When it boils, stir in quickly a quarter of a pound of ground rice which has been smoothly mixed with another half-pint of milk. Continue stirring until the rice has boiled for a few minutes, and until it leaves the sides of the saucepan with the spoon, then take out the rind, pour the rice into a well-oiled mould, and put in a cool place to set. Cut the rind of a lemon into strips an inch long and the eighth of an inch wide, throw them into boiling water, let them boil for two minutes, then drain and dry them. Put six ounces of sugar into a pint of water, add the juice of the lemon and the strips of rind, and simmer gently for two hours. When wanted for use turn out the rice, pour the syrup gently over it, and take care that the lemon-rind is equally distributed. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A moulded ground-rice pudding served cold under a candied lemon syrup. Nothing here is difficult, but two details decide whether it turns out: the rice must be slaked in cold milk before it meets the hot, and the mould must be set long enough to hold its shape.
- Ground riceA milled raw rice, coarser than the fine Asian rice flours but used in the same way; it is not ground cooked rice and not a pudding rice. A quarter of a pound is about 115 g, and it will thicken sharply once it hits boiling milk.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so a pint and a half is about 850 ml and the extra half-pint about 285 ml, giving roughly 1.1 litres of milk in all. Using US pints will make a noticeably stiffer pudding.
- The slaking stepMixing the rice flour smooth with cold milk before adding it to the pan is the hinge of the recipe. Tipped in dry it will seize into lumps that no amount of stirring will disperse.
- Bruised almondsFive or six sweet almonds, crushed to release their oil, flavour the milk faintly. Only the rind is taken out; the recipe gives no straining step. Bitter almonds are not called for here and should not be substituted.
- The rindPare it in wide strips with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns the milk bitter over a long infusion. Remove it before moulding, as instructed.
- Oiling the mouldA flavourless oil, wiped on thinly, gives a clean release; butter sets firm in the cold and can make the pudding stick. Allow a mould or basin of at least 1.2 litres, and rather more to be safe.
- Setting time"A cool place" meant a larder. Four hours in the refrigerator is the minimum and overnight is better; a warm pudding will slump the moment it is turned out.
- The syrupSix ounces of sugar (about 170 g) to a pint of water simmered two hours reduces to a thick, candied syrup with the rind translucent in it. Keep the heat very low and top up with a splash of water if it threatens to caramelise before the peel softens.
- YieldSix to seven small servings as written. The syrup can be made a day ahead and warmed slightly to pour.
Ground-rice moulds belong to the great Victorian family of "shape" puddings — blancmanges, flummeries and cornflour moulds — that relied on a starch rather than gelatine or eggs to set, and so were cheap, keepable and safe to make in a kitchen without ice. Cassell's notes the probable cost at tenpence for six or seven people, which is the point of the dish as much as its flavour: milk, sugar and rice flour were among the least expensive sweet ingredients in a late nineteenth-century larder, and the candied lemon peel did the work of making them look like a dinner-party sweet. The technique of boiling peel briefly to soften it and then simmering it slowly in sugar syrup is the standard confectioner's method for candying citrus, scaled down here to a garnish, and it explains the otherwise startling two-hour simmer.