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RICE FROTH (another way)
To one-third of a pound of rice allow one quart of new milk, the whites of three eggs, three ounces of loaf sugar, finely-pounded, a stick of cinnamon, or eight or ten drops of almond flavouring, or six or eight young bay-leaves, and a quarter of a pound of raspberry jam. Boil the rice in a pint of water. When the rice is absorbed, add the milk, and let it go on boiling until quite tender, keeping it stirred to prevent burning. If cinnamon or bay-leaves are used, boil them with the milk, and remove them when the rice is sufficiently done; if essence of almonds be used as a flavouring, it may be added with the sugar. When the rice-milk is cold, put it into a glass dish or china bowl, beat up the whites of the eggs to froth, sweeten lightly, cover the rice with it, and put little pieces of raspberry jam over the top. This is a cheap and an ornamental dish.
A Victorian rice pudding served cold under a raw meringue. The rice itself is straightforward; the topping is the problem, and it is why the dish cannot be recommended as printed.
- The uncooked egg whiteThe three whites are beaten, sweetened and spooned over cold rice, then served. Nothing in the method brings them above room temperature, so any Salmonella present in the shell egg survives to the table. Use a current recipe if you want a frothed white topping.
- Cooled, then heldCooled, then topped — The rice-milk must go completely cold before the froth goes on. A sweetened milk-and-starch base sitting at ambient temperature is a good growth medium; this compounds the raw-white problem rather than sitting apart from it.
- Bay leaves are not interchangeableYoung leaves of true bay, Laurus nobilis, were a standard Victorian substitute for almond flavouring in milk puddings and are safe in this quantity. Cherry laurel, Prunus laurocerasus, was also used in period kitchens for the same purpose and is not safe; its leaves yield hydrogen cyanide. Six to eight leaves is a lot of infusion either way.
- Almond flavouring"Essence of almonds" in a book of this date often meant a preparation based on bitter almond, which carries benzaldehyde and traces of cyanide. Modern almond extract is a different product and not a like-for-like read of the original instruction.
- Quantities and vesselsOne-third pound of rice is about 150 g; a quart is 40 fl oz, roughly 1.1 litres, of "new milk" — whole, unhomogenised, and in this period frequently unpasteurised. Three ounces of loaf sugar is about 85 g, pounded from a sugarloaf, which was still a common household form of sugar at this date.
- YieldThe book gives none. The rice and milk together make roughly six modest servings in a glass dish, which is how it was meant to be brought to table.
Rice puddings dressed up with a beaten-white topping run through nineteenth-century English cookery under names like rice froth, a way of turning the cheapest possible sweet — rice, milk, sugar — into something that looked like a company dish.