Rice, Buttered
INGREDIENTS.lb. of rice, 1½ pint of milk, 2 oz. of butter, sugar to taste, grated nutmeg or pounded cinnamon.
Wash and pick the rice, drain and put it into a saucepan with the milk; let it swell gradually, and, when tender, pour off the milk; stir in the butter, sugar and nutmeg or cinnamon, and, when the butter is thoroughly melted and the whole is quite hot, serve. After the milk is poured off, be particular that the rice does not burn; to prevent this, do not cease stirring TIME.-About hour to swell the rice.
SEASONABLE at any time. it.
A plain milk-simmered rice, closer to a sweetened side dish than a set pudding. The text as printed has lost some of its fractions in reproduction, so read the quantities with care.
- The missing fractions"lb. of rice" and "About hour to swell the rice" have both dropped their fractions in the original printing. The rice weight was most likely ½ lb. (a little over a cup) to 1½ pints of milk, and the missing time fraction was probably ½ or ¾ hour; either way, expect the rice to swell in well under an hour over low heat.
- PintsBeeton's pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, so 1½ pints is about 30 imperial fl oz, or a little over 3½ US cups. Using US pints will leave the rice underhydrated.
- The hingeOnce the milk is poured off you have starchy rice and butter in a dry hot pan, which will catch in under a minute. Pull the pan off the direct heat while you stir in the butter and sugar, and keep the spoon moving until it is served.
- Pour off the milk, or don'tThe recipe directs draining, which gives a drier, more grain-separate dish. If the rice has absorbed almost everything by the time it is tender there is nothing to pour off, which is fine -- the result is simply creamier.
- "Wash and pick"Picking meant removing grit and stones from unsorted rice; modern packaged rice needs only a rinse, and even that is optional. A short-grain or pudding rice swells and softens better here than long-grain.
- Pounded cinnamonCinnamon bought in stick form and crushed in a mortar. Ground cinnamon from a jar is the same thing, though older stock loses its scent — a fresh tin makes a noticeable difference in a dish this plain.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; on the likely quantities, four as a sweet accompaniment or three as a dish on its own is a reasonable estimate. It stiffens as it cools and is best served straight from the pan.
Buttered rice sits among the many milk-and-rice dishes in Beeton, a tradition generally traced further back than the baked, egg-enriched rice pudding, though the two overlap and Beeton prints both. Rice reached the English kitchen as an expensive spiced import and was long associated with the sweet and medicinal register — thickened with milk, sugared, and dusted with nutmeg or cinnamon, spices often paired with dairy in English cookery, though nutmeg and mace remained costly rarities until well after the medieval period. By the 1860s cheap imported rice had made such dishes thoroughly ordinary, and Beeton's note that it is "seasonable at any time" is the point: unlike fruit puddings, this one asked nothing of the calendar and little of the purse. The instruction to let the rice "swell gradually" reflects a stovetop world of ranges and trivets where gentle heat had to be managed by position rather than by a dial.