Home › Desserts › Indian Rice Pudding
Indian Rice Pudding
4 cups milk 1 cup rice ½ cup molasses 2 tablespoons butter teaspoon ginger 1/4 teaspoon salt Mix ingredients in the order given, pour into deep baking dish, set in a pan of hot water, and bake two hours. Stir once during cooking.
A baked molasses rice pudding of the plainest sort, and one that depends almost entirely on gentle heat and a long stay in the oven. The original gives no temperature, which is the one thing a modern cook needs most.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is specified, but a two-hour milk pudding in a water bath means a slow oven: 300-325F. Higher and the milk will curdle and the top will set before the rice has softened.
- The water bath is not optionalSetting the dish in a pan of hot water is what keeps the milk below the point where it separates. Fill the outer pan to about half the depth of the pudding dish and top it up with boiling water if it cooks away.
- Rice to milk ratioOne cup of raw rice to four cups of milk bakes down to a very thick pudding rather than a loose one. For a looser, creamier result, use half a cup of rice to the same four cups of milk, or add another cup or two of milk to the original quantity.
- Which riceUse a plain medium- or short-grain white rice, uncooked and unrinsed of its surface starch. Converted or parboiled rice will not break down enough to thicken the milk, and long-grain basmati is wrong in both flavor and texture.
- The ginger measurementThe original reads simply "teaspoon ginger" with no number, apparently a numeral or fraction dropped in typesetting. One teaspoon of ground ginger against a half cup of molasses is assertive but balanced; start with three-quarters of a teaspoon if you are unsure.
- MolassesUse a cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will dominate. A robust or full-flavor molasses suits this pudding best.
- StirringThe single stir called for should come after the first 45 minutes or so, when the rice has begun to swell and settle. Stirring redistributes the grains from the bottom; after that leave it alone so a skin can form.
- Yield and servingServes six as written. Good warm rather than hot, with cold cream poured over.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, and alongside its chocolate recipes it carries a full complement of everyday New England cooking. "Indian" here does not refer to India: in nineteenth-century American kitchens the word signaled cornmeal, as in Indian meal and Indian pudding. This recipe uses rice in place of cornmeal while keeping the molasses-and-ginger seasoning of an Indian pudding. Molasses was a cheap sweetener in the New England pantry, arriving in quantity through Boston's West Indies trade, and puddings like this one were the frugal end of the dessert course — four cups of milk, a cup of rice and two hours of oven heat.