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Cocoanut Rice Pudding
1 cup rice 6 cups milk 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 eggs, beaten 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind 2 tablespoons butter, melted 1 cup sugar Wash rice, put it into upper pan of a double boiler with milk and cook over hot water for 2 hours, then add cocoanut, salt, eggs, lemon rind, butter and sugar. Turn into a greased pudding dish, stand in a pan of hot water and bake in hot oven 20 minutes. Decorate with cocoanut and serve with hot milk or custard.
A rice pudding built in two stages: a long, slow milk cook on the stovetop, then a brief bake in a water bath. The stovetop stage does nearly all the work.
- The hinge: temper the eggsThe rice comes off the double boiler close to scalding, and two beaten eggs stirred straight in will curdle. Whisk a ladle or two of the hot rice into the eggs first, then return the mixture to the pan.
- "Hot oven" means 425-450F"Hot oven" means roughly 400-450F -- that is the broad range the phrase covers in period baking books, which do not entirely agree. With the dish standing in hot water, 20 minutes at that heat sets the custard and colors the top; at a moderate 350F expect to need longer. Watch for a just-set center rather than trusting the clock.
- The water bath is not optionalStand the pudding dish in a pan of hot water reaching halfway up its sides. Without it the egg at the edges tightens and weeps before the middle sets.
- Dromedary CocoanutA brand of shredded dried coconut, apparently unsweetened. Modern bagged coconut is usually sweetened; if you use it, consider cutting the sugar to about three-quarters of a cup, since a full cup with sweetened coconut makes a very sweet pudding.
- Rice and milk ratioSix cups of milk to one cup of rice sounds extravagant but suits two hours over hot water; the grains swell and absorb the milk into a thick porridge. Ordinary white rice works. Instant rice will go to mush.
- Two hours, and whyA double boiler never exceeds boiling point, so nothing scorches and the rice softens without stirring. You can shorten this to about 45 minutes in a heavy saucepan over low heat, but you must stir and the milk may catch.
- Yield and servingRoughly eight servings from a two-quart dish. "Hot milk" as a sauce means exactly that, poured over at the table; a thin pouring custard is the richer option.
- Decorating with coconutScatter it after baking, or in the last few minutes. Twenty minutes in a hot oven turns loose shreds bitter and dark.
Dromedary was the trade name used by the Hills Brothers Company of New York for its dates, shredded coconut and other packaged goods, and it promoted itself through small free recipe booklets of exactly this kind for the product on the label. The framing as a "wholesome" dessert is of its moment: milk, eggs and rice were the standard proof of nutritional respectability in domestic-science writing, and coconut, newly cheap and shelf-stable thanks to industrial drying and shredding, was being sold as a wholesome addition rather than a mere confection. Baked rice puddings themselves are far older than the brand, running back through English nursery cookery to medieval rice-and-almond-milk dishes.