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Rice Pudding, Iced
Wash six ounces of the best Carolina rice, and pick out the discoloured grains. Put it into a saucepan with plenty of water, and boil it until the grains are tender without being broken. Drain it, pour over it half a pint of thick cream, and boil it again until it is very soft. Turn it out, beat well, sweeten, and flavour it with lemon, nutmeg, vanilla, or almonds. Put it into a plain mould, and freeze it until it is sufficiently firm. Serve it on a neatly-folded napkin. Time to boil the rice, about two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A frozen rice cream rather than a baked pudding, set in a mould and turned out. Two things need attention before anything else: the cooking time, and the fact that freezing in a plain mould without churning gives a dense, icy result.
- The two-hour boilModern long-grain rice is tender in 15-20 minutes, and the second cooking in cream perhaps 20-30 minutes more over low heat; the recipe's 'about two hours' may well cover both stages. Older, harder-dried rice may account for part of the difference, but follow the time as written today and you will have paste.
- Carolina riceA long-grain white rice once grown in the Carolina Low Country and prized in Britain as the best available. Any good long-grain white rice stands in; picking out discoloured grains is no longer necessary with milled supermarket rice.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Use double or heavy cream — the fat is what keeps the frozen pudding from setting into a solid block of ice.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. About 3 oz (a scant ½ cup) of caster sugar suits 6 oz of rice; stir it in while the mixture is still hot so it dissolves, and taste before freezing, since cold blunts sweetness.
- Flavouring with almondsThe recipe says only 'almonds'; Victorian kitchens might have reached for bitter almonds or ratafia. Use sweet almonds or a few drops of almond extract, or steep 2 oz of blanched ground almonds in the cream and strain.
- Freezing without a churnBeating the rice well while warm matters: it breaks the grains and distributes starch, which together with the cream's fat keeps the texture from setting solid. In a domestic freezer, still-freeze in the mould and stir the outer set edges into the centre every 30 minutes for the first two hours.
- Unmoulding and servingDip the mould briefly in warm water and invert. Serving on a folded napkin was the usual convention for iced and moulded dishes, and it would also catch any meltwater. Serves four to five, as stated.
Iced puddings occupy a distinct place in Victorian cookery books: they belong to the confectioner's end of the kitchen, made possible for ordinary households by the nineteenth-century ice trade and the pewter or zinc freezing pot packed with crushed ice and salt. The dependence on Carolina rice reflects a long-standing British preference — Carolina Gold and its relatives dominated the export market until the American Civil War disrupted Low Country cultivation, after which the name lingered as a general grade description for good long-grain rice more than a guarantee of origin. The dish sits close to the French riz à l'impératrice, a moulded rice cream of the same era, though this version dispenses with the custard and gelatine and relies on freezing alone to hold its shape.