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Rice Pudding (One cup of boiled rice one)
One cup of boiled rice, one pint milk, yolks of two eggs, two rounded tablespoons cornstarch, one teaspoon vanilla. Boil rice till grains lose shape. Heat milk to boiling point; while it is heating beat yolks light and stir into sugar. Dissolve cornstarch in onehalf cup cold milk or water, mix evenly with eggs and sugar, add all to scalded milk, stirring constantly till it boils to consistency of thick, rich cream; pour all into hot rice, mixing evenly, and add vanilla.
Meringue for Pudding-Two whites of eggs, four rounded tablespoons of sugar (pulverized or granulated), one-half teaspoon vanilla. Whip whites of eggs to stiff froth which will move solidly in bowl when turned: Whip in sugar and vanilla till smooth. Spread over pudding and brown to light straw color in quick, hot oven. Best served ice-cold with cream.
— Mrs. Edith E. Hubbard
A stirred cornstarch custard folded into cooked rice, crowned with meringue and served cold. The method is sound; the transcription has one real gap.
- The missing sugarThe base directions say to "stir into sugar" without ever giving a quantity — only the meringue's four tablespoons are specified. For a pint of milk, a custard of this type usually takes 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar, but the original is genuinely silent, so treat any figure as your own judgment rather than Mrs. Hubbard's.
- The hinge: temper, then boil gentlyThe cornstarch must actually come to a boil to lose its raw starch taste and set, yet the yolks will curdle if the pan is left alone. Stir constantly with a flat-edged spoon over medium heat and pull the pan the moment it thickens to heavy-cream consistency; cornstarch protects yolks from curdling far better than a plain custard, but not from scorching.
- "Boil rice till grains lose shape"This means genuinely overcooked rice, soft and broken down — closer to congee than to pilaf. Short or medium-grain white rice simmered in plenty of water for 25-30 minutes does it. One cup of cooked rice is meant, not one cup dry.
- "Quick, hot oven"Roughly 400-450F by the usual period tables. The meringue is only being coloured, not cooked through, so it needs 4-6 minutes at most — watch it rather than timing it, since "light straw color" arrives fast at that heat.
- Rounded tablespoonsA rounded tablespoon of the period is roughly one and a half level tablespoons. Two rounded tablespoons of cornstarch is about 3 level tablespoons, which is right for setting a pint of milk to a soft, spoonable body.
- Meringue on a cold puddingBecause this is served ice-cold, the meringue is browned first and the whole thing chilled. Expect some weeping after several hours in the refrigerator; assemble the same day if the top matters to you.
- YieldRoughly four to six servings, depending on the dish. The instruction to serve it ice-cold with cream is worth following; the original is explicit that this is how it is best eaten.
Rice puddings run through nineteenth-century American community cookbooks in two families: the slow-baked kind, where raw rice, milk and sugar spend hours in a low oven forming a skin, and the quick stovetop kind like this one, where already-cooked rice is stirred into a cornstarch custard. The second sort belongs to the era after cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple in the second half of the century, marketed heavily for exactly this purpose — thickening custards, blancmanges and cream pies without the expense of a dozen eggs. Using two yolks in the body and the two whites for meringue is the household economy that shaped countless recipes of the period: nothing left over in a bowl. Contributed recipes carry the contributor's name as a small guarantee of quality, and the closing note — best served ice-cold with cream — is the kind of practical detail such collections preserve.