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Rice Pudding, Ground
Beat a quarter of a pound of ground rice gradually to a smooth paste with half a pint of milk. Pour a pint of boiling milk over it, and let it boil for a quarter of an hour, stirring it all the time. When it is nearly cold stir into it three ounces of finely-shredded beef suet (or, if preferred, use a slice of butter), two table-spoonfuls of sugar, a little grated nutmeg or lemon-rind for flavouring, and from two to four well-beaten eggs. A table-spoonful of brandy may be added if liked. Pour the rice into a well-buttered dish, and bake in a moderate oven. Time to bake, three-quarters of an hour to one hour. Probable cost, 9d., if made with two eggs. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A baked rice-flour custard rather than a whole-grain rice pudding, and it behaves like a custard: the eggs must go in cool. Quantities are in imperial pints, so scale up if you are using US cups.
- Ground riceThis is finely milled rice flour, sold as rice flour or cream of rice; it is not ground-up cooked rice and not glutinous rice flour. A quarter of a pound is about 3/4 cup.
- Imperial pintsA British pint is 20 fl oz, so the half pint of cold milk is 1 1/4 US cups and the pint of boiling milk is 2 1/2 US cups. About 3 3/4 cups of milk in total.
- The hinge"When it is nearly cold" is the whole instruction. Beaten eggs stirred into hot rice will set into threads before the pudding ever reaches the oven, and no amount of baking will smooth them out.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as about 325-350F, though the book gives no temperature. Three-quarters of an hour to an hour suits the quantity here; the pudding is done when set at the edges with a slight tremble at the centre.
- The fifteen-minute boilRice flour thickens fast and scorches faster. Use a heavy saucepan over low heat, or a bowl set over simmering water, and stir constantly as written; the mixture will be thick by the end but still pourable, as the recipe expects.
- Beef suetShredded suet gives a richer, faintly savoury pudding in the old style. Fresh beef suet is a butcher's item now; the 'slice of butter' is unmeasured, and matching the 3 oz of suet is a reasonable reading.
- EggsTwo eggs gives a loose, milky pudding, four a firm sliceable custard. Victorian eggs were generally smaller than a modern large egg, so three is a sensible middle.
- Yield and servingFive or six as written. Serve warm rather than hot, plain or with stewed fruit or jam; the "probable cost, 9d." is a period price index and no use as a guide.
Ground rice puddings sat a step below whole-rice puddings in Victorian household cookery: quicker to cook, and smooth enough to be counted a nursery and invalid food as well as a family dessert. Rice flour became widely available in Britain through the nineteenth century as milling improved and imports from India and the Far East grew, and cookery writers of the period recommended it freely for thickening milk puddings, blancmanges and sauces. The suet in this version is the older habit showing through — shredded beef suet is often said to have been the usual enriching fat in English puddings before butter was cheap and reliably fresh year-round, and Cassell's offers butter as the modern concession. The optional spoonful of brandy and the choice between nutmeg and lemon-rind are standard flavourings of the English pudding tradition.