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Rice Whole in Molds
4 ounces rice 1 pint milk 1 dessertspoon sugar 1 bay leaf Wash the rice; put it in a double boiler after picking it over. Boil the milk, and pour it over the rice; add the bay leaf and sugar; if the flavor of lemon is preferred, add half the thin rind of a lemon. Cook the rice for two hours and a half, and see that the water in the outer pan is kept boiling all the time, and the pan is not allowed to boil dry. Pour into a damp mold, or small molds, and put in a cool place for five or six hours. Turn out carefully. Serve stewed fruit with the molds. If small molds are used, put a candied cherry or strawberry on top of each, and serve with whipped cream.
A plain moulded rice pudding built on the double boiler, with no eggs and no gelatine — the set comes entirely from starch. A few notes on measures and on why the long, slow cooking is the whole point.
- Weights and measures4 ounces of rice is a scant 2/3 cup; 1 pint is 2 cups milk (if the book is British, the period pint was 20 ounces, so 2 1/2 cups for the wetter version). A dessertspoon is between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, roughly 2 teaspoons — this is a barely sweet pudding by modern standards, and you may want 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar.
- Which rice"Whole" in the title most likely distinguishes unbroken grains from the ground rice or rice flour used in other puddings of the era, though the recipe does not say so. Use a short or medium-grain white rice such as arborio or pudding rice; long-grain will cook through without releasing as much of the starch that makes the pudding hold its shape.
- Picking overAn instruction from the days of loose bulk rice full of grit and stones. Packaged rice needs only a rinse, and if you want a firmer set you can skip the rinse entirely to keep the surface starch.
- The hinge: don't rush itTwo and a half hours in a double boiler sounds absurd but it is doing the work of the eggs — the starch has to break down completely so the mass sets cold. Direct heat on the stovetop will scorch the milk and leave the pudding loose. Keep the water in the lower pan at a bare boil and top it up; a dry pan means a scorched one.
- Bay leaf and lemonBay in milk puddings is an old and genuinely good custardy flavouring, not a mistake. Fish it out before moulding, along with the lemon rind, which should be pared thin with no white pith.
- Damping the mouldRinsing the mould in cold water and leaving it wet is what lets the pudding release; do not butter or oil it. Chill 5 to 6 hours, then loosen the edge and invert with a brief dip of the mould in hot water if it resists.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; roughly four servings in one mould, or six in small dariole or teacup-sized moulds. Any stewed fruit — rhubarb, plums, apricots — suits it, and the acidity balances an otherwise plain pudding.
Moulded rice puddings belong to the long European tradition of milk-and-starch entremets, running from blancmange to the nineteenth-century riz à l'impératrice — though not all of these set on starch alone; riz à l'impératrice is built on an egg custard with gelatine. Rice, milk and dried fruit were cheap, filling and widely used in period cookery. The double boiler — often called a bain-marie or, in American books, a farina boiler — was a standard tool for anything milk-based, since coal and gas ranges gave a fierce bottom heat that scorched milk readily. Flavouring milk with bay leaf predates the common use of vanilla extract in English kitchens, and survived in puddings and custards well into the twentieth century.