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Baked Rice Pudding
1195. Put half a pound of rice into three pints of skim milk, sweeten with three ounces of sugar, add an ounce of good beef or mutton dripping, and a laurel leaf. Nutmeg, lemon-peel, or allspice is an improvement when at hand. This, when baked, will produce about four pounds of good solid pudding, at a cost of rice 1 d., sugar 1d., milk 3d., dripping d., total 6d.
SPRATS OR HERRINGS (both Fresh and Cured), 1196. When fried in dripping or lard, with potatoes and onions,
A plain, thrifty baked rice pudding built on skim milk and dripping rather than cream and butter. It works, but the original assumes a cooling bread oven and a cook who knows what to look for.
- Oven and timeThe original gives no oven or timing at all, only "when baked"; it assumes a cook who knows a cooling bread oven. In a modern oven a slow heat, in the region of 300-325F, for something like 2 to 2 1/2 hours suits it: the rice needs to swell slowly in the milk, and a hotter oven sets a skin before the grain has softened. Stirring once early on will break up the raft of rice, though the recipe does not ask for it.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pound of rice is about 1 1/4 cups of pudding or short-grain rice; three pints is 60 fl oz (Imperial pints, so about 1.7 litres). Three ounces of sugar is a scant half cup. Use a deep dish of at least 3 quarts, as the milk rises as the rice absorbs it.
- Laurel leafThis means a leaf of bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) -- an ordinary bay leaf. Do not substitute leaves from the cherry laurel hedging shrub, which some Victorian cooks used for almond flavour and which is not food. Remove the bay before serving.
- DrippingAn ounce of beef or mutton dripping is about 2 tablespoons. Mutton fat gives a distinctly savoury edge that can read as odd in a sweet pudding; beef dripping is milder. Butter is an easy substitute, though it changes the character of the dish.
- Skim milkAlmost certainly specified for economy in a recipe costed to the penny. The "good solid pudding" of the original comes largely from the ratio of rice to milk; the low fat will not soften it. Whole milk gives a creamier, looser result if you are not costing the dish.
- FlavouringsNutmeg, lemon peel or allspice are offered as "an improvement when at hand," i.e. not to be counted on in this kitchen. Grate nutmeg over the surface before baking so it browns; add lemon peel in wide strips and lift them out with the bay.
- YieldAbout four pounds of finished pudding, which serves eight to ten as a substantial course. A pudding this solid will set firm when cold, though the recipe says nothing about how it was served.
This belongs to a Victorian genre of costed cookery -- recipes published with the price of each ingredient in pence so that a working household, a school or a soup kitchen could see at a glance what a meal came to. Sixpence for four pounds of pudding was the point of the entry as much as the flavour. Rice came into Britain cheaply through the East India trade and was widely used to turn a little milk into a filling dish; dripping, the fat saved from roasting meat, was the household's free cooking fat and turns up in sweet baking of this period in a way it rarely does now. Bay leaf steeped in milk was one of the flavourings used in English milk puddings and custards before vanilla became cheap, alongside lemon peel, cinnamon and almond.