Rice Pudding
2 quarts milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup rice 2/3 cup sugar Grated nutmeg or cinnamon Wash the rice; mix with half the milk and the salt and sugar and pour into a buttered pudding dish. Bake for several hours in a slow oven, stirring frequently and adding the rest of the milk. When the last milk is added, grate nutmeg over the top and let the pudding brown.
A cup of seeded or seedless raisins may be baked in the pudding if desired. 2 cups hot milk Pinch of salt
A classic long-baked rice pudding, cooked entirely in the dish with no pre-boiling of the rice. The method is sound; the only real demands are a genuinely low oven and patience.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300F (150C). Anything hotter and the milk skins and scorches at the edges before the grains have softened and released their starch.
- Time"Several hours" means roughly 2 1/2 to 3 hours at 300F. The pudding is done when the rice is fully tender and the mixture is thick but still visibly loose, since it sets further as it cools.
- The riceUse a short or medium grain white rice for the creamiest result. Long grain works but stays separate and gives a thinner, less creamy result; do not use parboiled or converted rice, which will not break down.
- Stirring, then stoppingStir every 30 to 40 minutes for the first two hours, folding the skin back in each time, and add the reserved milk in two or three additions. Stop stirring once the last milk goes in so the top can set and brown.
- Dish sizeTwo quarts of milk plus rice needs at least a 3-quart baking dish. The pudding barely rises but it does boil at the edges, and a shallow dish will spill.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the surface at the end rather than stirring it through. Pre-ground nutmeg loses most of its aroma over the long bake.
- RaisinsIf using the optional cup of raisins, add them in the last hour. Added at the start they collapse and darken the pudding.
- The stray lineThe trailing "2 cups hot milk / Pinch of salt" appears to be a stray fragment from an adjacent recipe and has no place in this one. Ignore it.
- YieldAbout eight to ten servings. Good warm, and also good cold the following day, when it will have set firm enough to spoon in slabs.
Baked rice puddings of this kind, with no eggs and no pre-cooked rice, belong to a long tradition of thickening milk with a grain over very low heat. Cheap rice and cheap milk made such a pudding practical for ordinary households: by the late nineteenth century American rice from the Carolinas and Louisiana was a common pantry item, and a pudding that used two quarts of milk and two-thirds of a cup of rice was an economical way to turn a surplus of milk into a dessert. The long unattended bake also suited a coal or wood range, where a slow corner of the oven was simply available for hours after the main cooking was done.