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Rice Cups
Sweeten a pint of milk, and flavour with cinnamon or lemon-rind. Mix two table-spoonfuls of ground rice smoothly with a little cold milk, add the well-beaten whites of three eggs, and mix in the boiling milk. Stir the preparation over the fire until it is thick and smooth, then pour it into tea-cups which have been soaked in cold water. Turn the rice out of these when cold, and pour round the little shapes a custard made with the yolks of the eggs. Put a spoonful of bright-coloured jam or jelly upon each mould by way of ornament. If eaten cold, any fruit syrup may be used instead of sauce. Time, three or four minutes to boil the rice. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A moulded rice-flour cream with a pouring custard made from the leftover yolks — thrifty Victorian construction, nothing wasted. A few of the instructions need translating.
- Ground rice is rice flourNot cooked rice, and not the coarse rice pudding grain. Fine rice flour from an Asian grocer or the baking aisle behaves the same way; coarser "ground rice" gives a slightly gritty set, which is what the original would have had.
- An imperial pintCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml, not the American 16 oz. Two tablespoons of rice flour to that much milk is a soft set — enough to turn out of a cup but barely. If you want a shape that holds its edges, three tablespoons is safer.
- The order mattersSlake the rice flour in cold milk first, or it will lump instantly. The beaten whites go into that cold slurry, then the boiling milk is poured in — adding whites to hot liquid directly would scramble them.
- "Three or four minutes to boil"That is the minimum for the starch to thicken. Give it five or six minutes of steady stirring over moderate heat so the raw floury taste cooks out, and keep it moving because rice flour catches on the base quickly.
- Soaking the cupsWetting the moulds with cold water and not drying them is what lets the set cream slide out. Standard teacups work; so do 150 ml dariole moulds or ramekins. Chill at least three hours before turning out.
- The yolk custardNo proportions are given. Three yolks to roughly half a pint (about 280 ml) of milk with a spoonful of sugar makes a proper pouring custard. Cook it to 175-180F (80C) over gentle heat — it must thicken but never boil, or it curdles.
- FlavouringInfuse the cinnamon stick or pared lemon rind in the milk while it heats, then strain it out before it goes into the rice flour. Grated rind left in gives a bitter edge and speckles the white shapes.
- Yield'Sufficient for three or four persons', which in practice means three or four small cups. The "probable cost, 1s" is a shilling — a period price marker, not a modern guide.
Rice cups belong to the large Victorian family of moulded milk puddings — blancmanges, flummeries, creams — in which a setting agent (rice flour, cornflour or arrowroot, or isinglass and gelatine at the richer end) sets sweetened milk firm enough to turn out of a shape. Ground rice was among the cheaper of these thickeners, and was often recommended for nursery and invalid cookery as well as for family dinners, on the grounds that it was digestible and stretched a pint of milk a long way. The construction here is characteristic of the household economy Cassell's preached: the whites stiffen and whiten the moulds, the yolks become the custard poured round them, and a spoonful of jam supplies the colour that the dish itself entirely lacks. Turning a pudding out of a wetted teacup, rather than out of a decorative mould, suggests a modest rather than a grand table.