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Rice Pudding
5 cups milk 1/2 cup rice 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup sugar Grated rind of 1/2 lemon Wash the rice, mix ingredients, and pour into a buttered dish. Bake three hours in a very slow oven, stirring three times during the first hour to prevent rice from settling. Should not brown the first hour. Stir at the end of the second hour. The milk should be like thin cream. If this pudding is to be served quickly use four cups of milk instead of five, but it is better to use five and cook longer. Serve with preserves.
A baked rice pudding of the old school: no eggs, no cream, just milk and starch given three hours to become one thing. The oven temperature and the stirring are what make or break it.
- "Very slow oven"Roughly 250-275F in a modern oven. Anything hotter drives off the milk before the starch has time to swell, and the top browns while the middle is still soupy; the recipe's own instruction that it "should not brown the first hour" is the check.
- The riceUse a short- or medium-grain white rice such as Arborio, Carolina or pudding rice. Long-grain will work but stays separate; converted and instant rice will not release enough starch to thicken the milk.
- Whole milk onlyThe recipe has no eggs and no cream, so all the body comes from milk fat and rice starch. Skim or low-fat milk gives a thin, watery pudding.
- The stirring is the hingeThe recipe stirs three times in the first hour and again at the end of the second for the stated reason: to prevent the rice from settling to the bottom, where it packs and scorches.
- Judging doneness"The milk should be like thin cream" is the test, not the clock. It will look looser in the oven than it does cold, since the pudding sets further as it cools.
- Dish and depthThe recipe says only "a buttered dish"; 5 cups of milk plus swelling rice wants something of about 2 quarts to allow for stirring without slopping.
- Lemon rindGrate only the yellow zest of half a lemon; the white pith turns bitter over three hours of baking. A strip of rind removed before serving is an alternative if you dislike flecks.
- Yield and servingServes four to six. The recipe says only "Serve with preserves" and does not specify hot or cold.
Baked milk-and-rice puddings became a fixture of English and American home cooking once rice was cheap and ovens could be held at a low steady heat, and the long unattended bake suited a coal or wood range with a cooling firebox. The absence of eggs is worth noting, since the richer custard-style rice puddings of the period often included them.