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White Lady Pudding
Wash well 6 ounces of rice and put on to boil in a double boiler with 1 quart of milk, I vanilla bean and a pinch of salt; boil at least two hours.
Have soaked in a very little water 2 ounces of gelatine; add to the rice 5 ounces of sugar, and when the rice is very soft add the gelatine; remove from the fire and cool; when the pudding begins to stiffen add ½ pint of whipped cream, turn in a mold and set on ice to harden from four to five hours. This is pronounced delicious served with strawberry sauce made with jam.
A moulded rice cream of the sort that appeared on late-Victorian and Edwardian dessert tables, cheap in ingredients and slow in execution. Two things need attention before you start: the gelatine quantity and the rice.
- The gelatine is the hingeTwo ounces of modern powdered gelatine is roughly eight envelopes, enough to set something like a gallon of liquid. Period gelatine was sold in sheet and leaf as well as granulated form, and strengths varied. For about a quart of cooked rice and milk plus a half pint of cream, 3 to 4 teaspoons (a little over one envelope) of modern powder is the working range; more turns the pudding to rubber.
- Blooming and dissolving"Soaked in a very little water" means bloomed: sprinkle the powder over 3 tablespoons cold water and leave five minutes until spongy. It must go into the rice while the rice is still hot enough to dissolve it completely, before any cooling. Undissolved grains leave hard specks.
- Rice and vesselUse a short-grain pudding rice, not long-grain; 6 ounces is a scant cup dry. A double boiler is what keeps two hours of milk from scorching, and there is no shortcut — a heavy pan over the lowest heat with frequent stirring is the substitute, not a simmer over direct flame.
- Two hours is not a misprintThe long, gentle cooking breaks the grains down so the pudding sets smooth rather than granular. The mixture should be thick and almost porridge-like, with no chalky centre left in any grain.
- The vanilla beanSplit it lengthwise before it goes in so the seeds release, and fish out the pod before adding the gelatine. One bean is generous for a quart; two teaspoons of extract stirred in off the heat is the practical equivalent.
- Folding the cream"When the pudding begins to stiffen" is the moment the mixture mounds slightly on a spoon — cooled to about room temperature but not yet set. Fold the softly whipped cream in then. Too warm and it melts out; too cold and the pudding seizes into lumps you cannot smooth.
- Setting"Set on ice" is the refrigerator. Four to five hours is right; overnight is better. Oil the mould very lightly, and unmould by dipping it in warm water for a count of ten.
- Yield and sauceServes eight to ten; use a mould of at least two quarts. The strawberry sauce is simply jam let down with a little water or lemon juice and warmed until pourable, then cooled.
Rice, milk and gelatine made a dessert that looked like a moulded cream but cost a fraction of one. Pale moulded rice puddings of this class — the French *riz à l'impératrice* among them — came out of nineteenth-century restaurant and hotel kitchens and were then economised downward for domestic cooks: the grand versions carry candied fruit, kirsch and a custard base, while the thrifty ones lean on rice and a spoonful of jam sauce for colour. The two-hour cook in a double boiler and the four hours on ice both point to a kitchen with time to spare; the ice, in a household without mechanical refrigeration, meant a delivered block in an ice chest.