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Plain Boiled Rice Pudding
The writer has not found occasion to be much concerned about boiled puddings of rice; hotel people who require anything so plain being amply satisfied with the rice prepared for a vegetable dish. If, however, the competition of the other restaurant is so severe that one must give good meals for ten, or fifteen, or twenty cents, or if there is Chinese help to be fed, a boiled rice pudding is not so bad. Besides, we have Dr. Andrew Combe's "Physiology of Digestion" to prove that it is the easiest of digestion of all puddings, and therefore commended to dyspeptics.
Wash a pint of rice; mix a handful or two of either raisins, currants or apples with it, tie up in a cloth with room enough to swell to three pints; put on in cold water and boil about an hour. Syrup or molasses for sauce. If the foregoing is a "poor man's pudding," the next must certainly be his rich relation's. It can be handsomely turned out of a handsome mould and the rich custard poured round. It will not be good unless the tapioca be thoroughly soaked as directed, and may take 1/2 pint more milk; the receipt is on the safe side for turning out in good shape.
A cloth-boiled pudding of the plainest sort: rice, dried fruit, water, and an hour of steady boiling. The instructions are compressed, and the last few sentences belong to the recipe that follows, not to this one.
- The hinge: leave room to swellA pint of rice will roughly treble as it cooks, and the cloth must be tied loosely enough to allow it. Tie tight and the pudding either bursts the cloth or cooks into a dense, gluey core.
- Preparing the clothScald a square of unbleached cotton or linen, wring it out, and dust the inside with flour before filling; the damp flour forms the skin that keeps water out. Gather and tie with kitchen string, leaving a good hand's width of slack, and keep the pudding fully submerged in boiling water, topping up with more boiling water as needed.
- QuantitiesA pint of rice is 2 cups dry, about 14 oz, and will give roughly 6 servings. "A handful or two" of raisins, currants or chopped apple is 1/2 to 1 cup.
- Cold water startPutting the pudding on in cold water may well be deliberate rather than careless, giving the grains time to begin absorbing before the outside sets. Once it reaches a boil, keep it at a bare, steady boil for the hour.
- Judging it doneAn hour is right for a pudding of this size; a larger bag needs longer. Untie, let it stand a minute for the steam to settle, then turn it out. The grains should be soft through with no chalky centres.
- The sauce"Syrup or molasses" means exactly that — warmed cane syrup or molasses poured over. Modern light molasses is closer to the period product than blackstrap, which will overwhelm the rice.
- The last three sentencesFrom "If the foregoing is a 'poor man's pudding'" onward, Whitehead is introducing the next receipt in the book — a moulded tapioca pudding with custard. The soaking instruction and the extra half pint of milk apply to that, not to this rice.
- The digestion claimAndrew Combe's Physiology of Digestion was a standard nineteenth-century authority, and plain boiled rice was routinely prescribed for weak stomachs. Treat it as period medical opinion rather than nutrition advice.
Cloth-boiled puddings were the workhorse dessert of English and American kitchens for a long stretch before baked puddings displaced them, and they survived longest exactly where this book places them between something something filling, sweet, and cooked in a pot already on the fire.