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Rice Moulds
Simmer a tea-cupful of rice in a quart of water with half a pound of loaf sugar and one ounce of butter until soft; stir in a few drops of vanilla, put the rice into small moulds or tea-cups, and leave till cold; then turn out and arrange on a glass-dish. Place a piece of red-currant jelly on each, and pour thick custard sauce round. Probable cost, 1s.
A cold moulded rice pudding set by starch alone, with no gelatine and no eggs in the mould itself. Everything depends on cooking the rice until it is thick enough to hold a shape.
- The hinge: cook it stiffThe mould sets only because the rice absorbs the water and the grains release enough starch to bind. Simmer gently, covered, stirring near the end, until the mass is thick enough to mound on a spoon — usually 30 to 40 minutes. A loose, soupy rice will slump the moment it is turned out.
- A tea-cupfulA Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at about a quarter of a pint, roughly 5 to 6 fl oz, so a scant cup of rice; an imperial quart is 40 fl oz, or about 5 US cups of water. That is a generous ratio, and most of the liquid is taken up by the rice over the long simmer.
- Which riceUse short-grain pudding rice, arborio or another high-starch round grain. Long-grain or parboiled rice will not throw off enough starch to set, and basmati will simply stay in separate grains.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a solid cone and broken up as needed; ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent. Half a pound is about 1 1/8 cups, which is very sweet by current taste — half that amount suits most palates, and the pudding will still set.
- Vanilla"A few drops" implies a concentrated essence rather than a mild one. With modern extract, start with a teaspoon; a split vanilla pod simmered with the rice and removed before moulding is another option.
- The mouldsRinse the cups or moulds with cold water and leave them wet before filling. The film of water lets the set rice slide out cleanly. Chill at least three hours, or overnight.
- Custard sauceThe "thick custard sauce" is a stirred egg custard — crème anglaise — cooked to about 175F, not a baked one. Cool it before pouring around the moulds so the rice does not soften at the base.
- YieldEnough for roughly four to six teacup-sized moulds. The stated cost of one shilling is for the whole dish.
Moulded rice belongs to the large Victorian family of cheap, cold, shapely puddings that let a modest kitchen send something decorative to table. Rice was an inexpensive staple in Britain by the 1870s, much of it imported from India and Burma, and it carried a reputation as nursery and invalid food — bland, digestible, easily sweetened. Turning it out of small moulds, crowning each with red-currant jelly and flooding the dish with custard converts that plain economy into a dessert with colour and contrast. Red-currant jelly was a common English preserve of the period, sharp enough to cut sugared rice, and was kept in the store cupboard for use with meat as readily as with pudding.