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Rice Pudding, Rich
Wash six ounces of rice, and boil it in as much water as will thoroughly cover it for twenty minutes. Drain it, and beat it up with a pinch of salt, a slice of fresh butter, a quarter of a pint of cream, a quarter of a pound of picked and dried currants, a table-spoonful of brandy, a flavouring of nutmeg, cinnamon, or lemon-rind, and four well-beaten eggs. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, and bake in a moderate oven. Send sifted sugar to table with it. Time to bake, one hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A baked, custard-bound rice pudding rather than the slow oven-simmered milk kind. The rice is cooked in water first, so the eggs and cream do all the enriching.
- QuantitiesSix ounces of rice is about 170 g, close to a cup uncooked. A quarter pint of cream is 5 fl oz in imperial measure, so a scant ⅔ US cup; a quarter pound of currants is 4 oz, around ¾ cup.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. At an hour it should be set at the edges with a faint wobble in the centre; a knife inserted off-centre comes out clean.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante grapes, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Picked" means going through them for stalks and grit, which modern packets no longer require.
- Beat it up while warmThe eggs come last in the original list, and it is best to beat the rice with the butter and cream before they go in, with the rice warm but not hot. Add four beaten eggs to steaming rice and you get scrambled egg through the pudding.
- Boiling the riceTwenty minutes in plenty of water suits a long or medium grain; the rice should be tender but still distinct, since it goes on to bake for an hour. Drain well or the custard will be loose.
- Dish and depthA buttered 1½ to 2 pint baking dish. Shallower gives more browned surface, deeper gives a softer set and may want a little longer.
- Water bathNot called for, but an egg-and-cream custard baked directly on the oven shelf can curdle at the edges. Standing the dish in a roasting tin of hot water keeps the texture even.
- YieldFive or six as the original states, and it is genuinely rich. "Sifted sugar" is caster or icing sugar passed through a sieve at the table.
Rice puddings run through English cookery from the sixteenth century onward, in early forms often said to have thickened meat broths and creams and later as a nursery staple of rice, milk and sugar left in a cooling oven. Cassell's marks this one "rich" to distinguish it from that plain version: the cream, the four eggs, the brandy and the currants push it toward the older Georgian tradition of baked and boiled puddings served as a proper dessert rather than a frugal supper for children. The listed cost of 1s. 6d. is telling, since a plain rice pudding of the same era would have cost considerably less; the difference lies in the richer ingredients. Nutmeg, cinnamon and lemon-rind as interchangeable flavourings is a familiar Victorian combination for a sweet baked custard, and sending sugar to table separately rather than mixing it in leaves sweetness to the diner.