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Rice and Apple Pudding
Throw half a pound of rice into boiling water, let it boil for ten minutes, drain, and dry it. Spread half of it on a pudding-cloth, and lay upon it six or eight apples, pared, cored and sliced, the thin rind of half a lemon, and two table-spoonfuls of sugar. Spread the remainder of the rice over the fruit, draw the cloth loosely over it, and tie it securely. Be careful to allow plenty of room for the rice to swell. Plunge the pudding into boiling water, and keep it boiling until done enough. It will be well to put a plate under it to keep it from sticking. Turn it cut carefully, and send to table with a small quantity of sweet sauce poured round the pudding, and more in a tureen. Time to boil, an hour and three-quarters to two hours. Probable cost, 7d. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A boiled cloth pudding of the old English kind: parboiled rice forms its own crust around apples and swells into a sealed dome. Nothing here is difficult, but the cloth and the pot demand attention.
- The hinge: room to swellThe rice goes in only partly cooked and swells considerably as it boils. Tie the cloth loosely enough that the parcel is slack, or the rice packs solid and the centre stays raw.
- Preparing the clothA clean, tightly woven cotton or linen cloth, about 20 inches square. Scald it, wring it out, and dust the inside generously with flour before spreading the rice; the damp flour sets into a skin that keeps water out and starch in.
- Which riceUse a short or medium-grain white rice such as pudding rice or arborio. Long-grain and parboiled rices will not give up enough starch to bind, and basmati is wrong in flavour. Half a pound is a scant cup and a quarter.
- ApplesSix to eight apples, say about 1 1/2 lb prepared. A Bramley collapses into sauce, which is fine here; a Granny Smith holds its slices.
- The potAn inverted plate or a trivet on the bottom, water at a genuine rolling boil, and the pudding fully submerged throughout. Keep a kettle going and top up with boiling water only, since cold water halts the swelling and can leave a seam of hard rice.
- TimingThe stated one and three-quarter to two hours is accurate for this size and is not a case of Victorian overcooking. The parcel takes a long while to reach temperature at the core.
- Sweet sauceThis generally means a simple pouring sauce: melted butter thinned with water or milk, sweetened and flavoured with lemon, wine or brandy. A thin custard or a lemon cornflour sauce serves the same purpose.
- Turning outLift the pudding by the knot, dip it briefly in a bowl of cold water to loosen the cloth, then untie and invert onto a warmed dish. Serve at once; boiled rice puddings set firm and dull as they cool.
- Yield and costSix to seven servings, as given. The 7d is late-Victorian retail pricing and is there so a housekeeper could cost her week, not as a guide to anything now.
Boiled puddings tied in a floured cloth were a mainstay of English domestic cookery from the seventeenth century onward, because a single pot over the fire could cook a pudding alongside the meat and vegetables without an oven. Such puddings commonly used a suet or flour crust; using parboiled rice as the casing is a thriftier variant. The convention of pricing each recipe to the penny and stating how many it feeds was standard in the large Victorian household dictionaries, aimed at a mistress ordering food for a fixed weekly sum. Cloth puddings faded through the twentieth century as basins, greaseproof paper and reliable ovens took over, and the boiled Christmas pudding is now nearly the only survivor in common use.