Apple Rice
Pare and core the apples. 1 cup hot cooked rice 2 cups milk 3 egg yolks 1 tablespoon lemon juice Arrange in baking dish, fill with currant jelly, and surround with rice, mixed with hot milk, egg yolks, butter, raisins and flavoring. Cook in oven until apples are tender. Remove from oven and cover with a meringue. Serve hot or cold. 2 cups milk
The printed text is a compressed, partly garbled version of a baked apple-and-rice pudding: the ingredient list and the method disagree, and several quantities never appear at all. Read it as a template rather than a formula.
- What is missingNo number of apples, no amount of butter, raisins, sugar or "flavoring" is given, and "2 cups milk" is printed twice — almost certainly a typesetting duplication, not a doubled quantity. For six apples, figure roughly 2 tablespoons butter, 1/3 cup raisins, 1/4 cup sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla or a little grated lemon rind.
- Order of workThe custard is the hinge. Beat the yolks with sugar, whisk in the hot milk gradually, then fold in the hot rice, butter, raisins and flavoring. Adding yolks directly to hot milk without tempering gives you scrambled egg through the rice.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven heat at all, only "until apples are tender." A moderate oven, conventionally read as about 350F, is a reasonable modern setting; at that temperature pared apples take roughly 35 to 50 minutes depending on variety and size, and the custard-bound rice should be just set and barely coloured.
- Choosing applesA firm baking apple that holds its shape is essential, since the cored cavities must stay upright to hold the jelly. Northern Spy, Rome or Braeburn work; a Macintosh-type will collapse into sauce.
- The jellyCurrant jelly was a common household preserve of the period and is now the harder item to find. Red currant jelly from an import shelf is closest; tart cranberry or quince jelly will substitute, though the flavour will shift.
- The riceHot cooked rice means plain boiled or steamed rice, still warm, not a sweetened pudding. Short-grain rice absorbs the milk better and gives a creamier result than long-grain.
- MeringueUse the three whites left over from the yolks with about 6 tablespoons sugar. Return to a 350F oven for 12 to 15 minutes, or 400F for 5 to 8 if you want a darker top; the meringue must be baked through, not merely tinted.
- YieldOne apple per person. The recipe never states a number, but the quantities printed — 1 cup rice, 2 cups milk, 3 yolks — will roughly cover six apples in a shallow baking dish.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston to sell chocolate and cocoa, and alongside its promotional chapters it carries a full general repertoire — hence a plain baked apple pudding sitting in the dessert section with no chocolate in it at all. The dish belongs to a large family of turn-of-the-century rice-and-fruit desserts in which cooked rice was bound with milk and egg yolks and used to stretch fruit into a substantial sweet. The currant jelly filling and the meringue lid are period-typical: currant jelly was a common household preserve, and a meringue was one conventional use for whites left after a yolk-thickened custard. The recipe's telegraphic style, with an ingredient list that only half matches the method, is also typical of the book — these were written for cooks who already knew how a rice custard behaved and needed only the outline.