Creamed Rice
1/2 cup rice 1 cup boiling water 1 cup milk 1 teaspoon salt Put the washed rice, boiling water, milk, and salt into the inner cup of a double boiler, set it in the outer cup, which should contain boiling water, and cook one hour. Serve with cream or fruit sauce.
A plain double-boiler rice porridge of the sort that filled breakfast tables before packaged cereals. The method is forgiving; the only real variables are the rice and the salt.
- Rice typeThis assumes a long or medium white rice, not converted or instant. Short-grain rice gives a softer, more pudding-like result and may want a little extra milk toward the end.
- Cut the saltA full teaspoon for half a cup of rice reads as very salty to modern palates, especially if the dish is served with cream or fruit. A quarter teaspoon is closer to current practice.
- "Inner cup" and "outer cup"The upper and lower pans of a double boiler. Any heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water will do, provided the bowl does not touch the water.
- Why an hourFood in the upper pan stays below the boil, generally somewhere around 190-200F, so the rice swells slowly and the milk is far less likely to scorch. The hour is not an error; over direct heat the rice would soften in roughly a third of the time, but with more risk of a caught bottom and boiled-over milk.
- Water levelCheck the lower pan two or three times during the hour and top it up with boiling water. An hour is long enough for a small pan to run dry.
- ConsistencyExpect a loose, creamy porridge rather than distinct grains. If it thickens past what you want before the hour is up, stir in a few tablespoons of hot milk.
- YieldTwo generous breakfast servings, or three small ones. It thickens considerably as it cools and reheats well with a splash of milk.
Creamed rice belongs to the era when cereal for breakfast often meant a grain cooked in milk over water for an hour or more, and cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries give considerable space to oatmeal, hominy, cracked wheat and rice prepared this way. The double boiler suited that cooking: it was widely recommended in domestic-science teaching, and it made long, largely unattended cooking possible on a coal or wood range whose heat could not be finely regulated. Rice was cheap, digestible, and regarded as suitable for children and invalids.