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Rice Caudle, or Rice Milk
Soak two table-spoonfuls of whole rice in a cupful of cold water for one hour. Strain it, and put it into a saucepan with a pint and a half of cold milk. Let it simmer gently until it is so tender that it will pulp through a sieve. Put the pulp and milk into a clean saucepan, with a small pinch of salt, a little sugar, and a flavouring of lemon-peel, cinnamon, or grated nutmeg. Rice milk may be enriched by the addition of a little piece of butter, one or two beaten eggs, a glassful of wine, or a table-spoonful of brandy, but these additions should be made after the rice is taken off the fire. Or, mix a table-spoonful of rice smoothly with a little cold milk. Pour upon this gradually a pint of hot milk, and boil the mixture till it is smooth, stirring all the time. Sweeten and flavour according to taste. Time to boil the whole rice, about an hour and a half; the ground rice, about a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 4d. to 6d. per pint.
A thin spoon-drink rather than a pudding, and the texture is the whole point: it should pour, not mound. Two methods are given here, one using whole grains cooked to a pulp and one using ground rice as a quick thickener.
- Keep the milk from catchingAn hour and a half of gentle simmering will scorch milk in a thin pan over direct heat. Use a heavy-based saucepan on the lowest setting, or set a bowl over barely simmering water, and stir often. A skin forming is normal; whisk it back in.
- Whole rice vs. ground riceThe first method uses whole grains cooked until they collapse; short-grain pudding rice pulps far more readily than long-grain. The second uses ground rice, a coarse rice flour still sold for puddings — cream of rice or fine rice flour behaves the same way and thickens in ten to fifteen minutes.
- QuantitiesA pint and a half is 30 fl oz UK measure, about 850 ml; the single pint in the second method is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml. Two tablespoons of rice to that much milk is deliberately meagre — this is a drink.
- The sievePushing the cooked grains through a sieve with the back of a ladle gives a smooth result, as the recipe intends. If you blend it instead, pass it through a sieve afterwards anyway.
- Lemon-peelPare the zest in strips with a peeler, leaving the white pith behind, and simmer it with the milk rather than adding it at the end. Fish the strips out before serving. A small piece of cinnamon stick works the same way; ground nutmeg goes in at the finish.
- The enrichmentsButter, egg, wine or brandy all go in off the heat, as the recipe says, and for different reasons — the egg will curdle if boiled, and the alcohol is meant to be tasted rather than driven off. Whisk a ladleful of the hot rice into the beaten egg first, then return the lot to the pan.
- If you use eggResidual heat alone may not carry beaten egg to a safe temperature in a large volume of liquid. Return the pan to very low heat after tempering and stir until it thickens slightly and reaches 160F/71C, then take it straight off.
- YieldThe first version starts with a pint and a half of milk and will finish somewhat short of that after the long simmer; the second about a pint. Serve hot, in a cup or a bowl, and expect it to thicken as it cools.
A caudle was a warm, thickened, spiced drink, usually sweetened and usually laced with wine or spirits, given to invalids and to women lying-in after childbirth; the word comes through Old Northern French caudel (Old French chaudel) and ultimately from Latin calidus, hot. Earlier caudles were commonly based on ale or thin gruel, and the rice-and-milk version here fits the nineteenth-century taste for blander, milk-based sickroom food of the beef-tea and barley-water sort. The quoted probable cost of fourpence to sixpence a pint marks this out as cheap nourishment. The optional glass of wine or spoonful of brandy is a survival of the older, stronger drink, and in an invalid diet of the period it was regarded as medicinal rather than indulgent.