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Caramelized Rice and Apple Pudding
1 cup sugar 3 cups boiling water 1 cup raw rice 5 good-sized cooking apples Caramelize the sugar by allowing it to slowly melt until brown. Add the boiling water slowly and simmer till sugar is dissolved, then add the rice, previously washed. Boil 5 minutes, turn into greased pudding dish with the sliced, pared apples. Place in hot oven and cook till rice is tender, stirring frequently. Serve cold with cream and sugar. Serves 6.
A baked rice pudding sweetened entirely with caramel rather than milk or eggs, which makes it lighter and more translucent than the custard-style puddings of the same era. The one thing to get right is the caramel: pull it from the heat while it is the color of amber, because a caramel taken to dark brown will turn the whole pudding bitter.
- Caramelizing dry sugarMelt the cup of sugar in a heavy dry pan over medium heat, tilting rather than stirring once it liquefies. Stop the moment it reaches a deep amber; residual heat will darken it further in the pan.
- Adding the waterHot caramel and water react violently. Pour the boiling water in a thin stream at arm's length, and expect the caramel to seize into a lump before it dissolves back into syrup over low heat.
- "Hot oven"The recipe gives no temperature. In cookbooks of this period a hot oven is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Cook until the rice is tender rather than by the clock; expect roughly three quarters of an hour, longer if the dish is deep.
- RiceUse a medium- or long-grain white rice. Avoid converted or instant rices, which behave differently in liquid, and avoid a rice labelled for risotto, which will go gluey under this much stirring.
- LiquidThree cups of liquid to one cup of rice is generous, and the apples release more as they collapse. If the dish looks dry before the rice is done, add boiling water a few tablespoons at a time.
- Apples"good-sized cooking apples" means firm, tart varieties such as Granny Smith, Braeburn or Northern Spy. Slice them thickly; with a hot oven and frequent stirring some will break down into the rice regardless.
- Stirring"stirring frequently" is unusual for a baked pudding and looks deliberate: it keeps the rice from setting into a solid cake and distributes the caramel. Stir every so often through the baking, folding from the bottom.
- ServingServes 6, served cold with cream and sugar as directed. It thickens as it cools, chiefly from the rice starch, so expect a dense spoonable pudding rather than a loose one.
Caramelized sugar as the sole flavoring in a rice pudding fits a strand of early twentieth-century cooking in which burnt sugar served as an inexpensive flavoring alongside or in place of vanilla and spice. It appears across the period under names such as "burnt sugar" or "caramel" flavoring, sometimes bottled as a syrup and kept on the shelf for cakes and puddings. The absence of milk and eggs is worth noting: milk-based rice puddings generally called for a slow oven and long baking, while this one relies on water and the apples' own juice, which may be why it can go into a hot oven and be stirred like a stovetop dish.