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Rice Pudding (Boil one cup of rice soft)
Boil one cup of rice soft and very dry. Add, while warm, butter size of an egg, yolks of four eggs, grated rind of one lemon, one pint of milk. Mix and bake a half-hour. Beat the whites of four eggs, add a pint of powdered sugar, juice and pulp of the lemon; after the pudding has cooled, pour over the top and brown in the oven. To be eaten cold.
— Mrs. William Joesbury
A lemon rice pudding in two stages: a baked custard-rice base, then a meringue browned on top. The instructions assume you know both, so here are the numbers the original leaves out.
- Butter size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Stir it into the rice while the rice is still hot so it melts in rather than sitting in lumps.
- Bake at 350FNo temperature is given, but a half-hour bake for a milk-and-yolk custard means a moderate oven, 350F. The base is set when a knife comes out clean at the centre; it should not brown or crack.
- Boil the rice soft and dryThis is the hinge. One cup of raw long-grain rice cooked in water until fully soft and then drained and steamed dry, so it can absorb the pint of milk without the pudding turning soupy. Wet rice gives a loose, weeping pudding.
- Temper the yolksFour yolks going into hot rice will scramble if dumped in. Beat them with the cold pint of milk first, then stir that mixture into the warm rice.
- A pint of powdered sugarMeasured as modern confectioners' sugar a pint is roughly 8 to 9 ounces, which works out near 2 ounces per egg white, in line with usual meringue ratios; bear in mind that nineteenth-century 'powdered sugar' meant finely ground granulated, which weighs more to the pint. Either way the quantity is not a misprint. Add it gradually to whites already beaten to soft peaks, or the foam collapses.
- Lemon, used twiceThe grated rind goes into the base, the juice and pulp into the meringue. Zest before you cut the lemon. The juice will slacken the meringue, so fold it in at the very end and expect a softer, spoonable topping rather than a stiff one.
- Browning the topOnce the pudding has cooled, spread the meringue to the edges of the dish so it seals, and give it 8 to 10 minutes at 350F, or 3 to 4 at 400F, until the peaks colour. Longer and the meringue dries out and beads.
- Dish and yieldA 1.5-quart baking dish suits the quantity. Serves six. The instruction to eat it cold is meant seriously — the flavour and the set both improve after a few hours in the refrigerator.
Rice pudding built on a foundation of cooked rice, egg yolks and milk, then crowned with a sweetened meringue, was one of the standard American company puddings of the late nineteenth century, and the same construction appears under names like queen of puddings and lemon pudding when breadcrumbs or cracker crumbs replace the rice. The pattern may reflect a household economy in which yolks and whites were put to different jobs in the same dish rather than one being discarded, though that is inference rather than documented practice. The dish stretched a pint of milk and four eggs into a dessert for a whole table. Compilations like this one, gathered from local contributors and printed with each name attached, were often sold to raise money for a church or a library, and the recipes are written for cooks who already knew what a moderate oven felt like.