Home › R › Rice Pudding, Rich, Baked
Rice Pudding, Rich, Baked
INGREDIENTS for pudding for 6 persons.-1 small teacupful of rice, 4 eggs, 1 1/2 pint of milk, 2 oz. of fresh butter, 2 oz. of beef marrow, lb. of currants, 2 tablespoonfuls of brandy, nutmeg, 1/4 lb. of sugar, the rind of lemon. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 4d.
Put the lemon-rind and milk into a stewpan, and let it infuse until the milk is well flavoured with the lemon; in the meantime, boil the rice until tender in water, with a very small quantity of salt, and, when done, let it be thoroughly drained. Beat the eggs, stir to them the milk, which should be strained, the butter, marrow, currants and remaining ingredients; add the rice, and mix all well together. Line the edges of the dish with puff-paste, put in the pudding, and bake for about hour in a slow oven. Slices of candied-peel may be added at pleasure, or Sultana raisins may be substituted for the currants. TIME.- hour.
RICE PUDDING. baked, to give plenty of time for the rice to swell, and for it to be very thoroughly done.
TIME.-1 to 2 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian baked rice custard enriched with marrow and brandy. The transcription has lost several fractions, so read the quantities with care before you begin.
- Missing fractionsThe text prints "lb. of currants" and "the rind of lemon" where the original almost certainly read 1/4 lb. and 1/2 lemon. Treat the currant weight as ambiguous; 4 oz suits a pint of milk and a teacup of rice without swamping the custard.
- A small teacupfulA Victorian teacup is roughly 5-6 fl oz, so about 4 oz (generous 1/2 cup) of raw rice. Use short-grain or pudding rice, not long-grain, for the right texture.
- Slow ovenThe book gives no temperature; a slow oven is usually reckoned at about 300-325F. The times in this transcription conflict -- "about hour" in the method, then 1 to 2 hours in the closing note, which appears to belong to the following, truncated entry. With the rice already boiled tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour is enough; the custard is set when it barely trembles at the centre.
- Beef marrowMarrow scooped from split beef leg bones, chopped fine. A butcher will supply bones on request. It gives a soft richness butter alone does not; if you leave it out, add 2 oz more butter and expect a leaner pudding.
- Infusing the milkBring the milk and lemon rind just to a bare simmer, then take it off the heat and leave it to steep 15-20 minutes before straining. Pare the rind thinly -- any white pith turns the pudding bitter.
- TemperingLet the infused milk cool to lukewarm before it goes into the beaten eggs, and stir rather than whisk. Hot milk poured straight in will scramble the eggs and the pudding will weep in the oven.
- Puff-paste edgingOnly the rim of the dish is lined, as a border rather than a base. A strip of bought puff pastry pressed round the buttered lip does the job; it browns faster than the custard sets, so shield it with foil if it colours early.
- YieldSix servings, as stated, from a dish of about 1.5 litres. Best served warm rather than hot, when the marrow and butter have firmed slightly.
Rice pudding in this form belongs to the long English tradition of enriched baked custards, closer to a Tudor or Stuart sweetmeat than to the nursery pudding of skin and sugar. The tell is the beef marrow: marrow puddings appear frequently in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English cookery books, and by Mrs Beeton's day the ingredient seems to have been largely confined to "rich" versions of otherwise plain dishes, alongside brandy, currants and candied peel. Rice, once an imported luxury, became an everyday staple over the nineteenth century, cheap enough by the 1860s that the same book offers a plain rice pudding of rice, milk and sugar for a few pence. The stated average cost of 1s. 4d. marks this one as company food, and the note that it is "seasonable at any time" fits ingredients -- rice, dried fruit, spirits, preserved peel -- that kept in the store cupboard year round.