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Baden Baden Pudding
Wash thoroughly a teacupful of rice and place it in a saucepan with a piece of stick vanilla and half a pint of milk, boiling until soft. Just previous to the rice becoming fully cooked, put in half an ounce of dissolved gelatine and boil it; sweeten a pint of cream with four tablespoonfuls of sugar and whip to a stiff froth, and when cooked take the rice from the fire and let it cool slightly, then stir in the cream at once. Rinse a mould with cold water, pour in the mixture and put it in a cold place until firm. When ready to serve, dip the mould into tepid water, wipe it and turn the pudding out onto a dish covered with a fancy dish-paper or folded napkin garnished with preserved fruit.
A cold rice cream set with gelatine, in the family of riz à l'impératrice. Two things in the original text will trip you: the milk quantity is tight for the rice, and gelatine should not be boiled.
- The hinge: do not boil the gelatineModern powdered gelatine loses setting strength if held at a rolling boil. Bloom it in a little cold water, then stir it into the hot rice off the heat until fully dissolved.
- Rice and liquidA teacupful is variously reckoned at anywhere from half a cup to a cup; take it as roughly 3/4 cup of short-grain pudding or Arborio rice. Half a pint of milk (1 cup) will not carry that much rice to softness; expect to use 2 to 2 1/2 cups, adding it gradually, and cook until the grains are quite tender and the mass creamy.
- Half an ounce of gelatineAbout 14 g, or two standard 7 g envelopes, which sets this quantity firmly enough to unmould. If you prefer a softer, spoonable pudding, one envelope is enough but it will not hold a shape.
- Stick vanillaA whole vanilla bean, split, simmered with the rice and removed before the cream goes in. A teaspoon of extract stirred in at the end is the practical substitute.
- Folding, not stirringThe instruction to "stir in the cream at once" means while the rice is barely warm — hot rice melts whipped cream, cold rice seizes into lumps. Whip the pint of cream to soft-to-medium peaks and fold it in in thirds.
- Setting time"A cold place until firm" means the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, better overnight. Rinsing the mould with cold water rather than oiling it is correct and still works.
- UnmouldingA few seconds in tepid water, then invert onto a chilled plate. If it resists, lay a warm cloth over the mould rather than returning it to the water.
- YieldA pint of cream plus the rice fills a 1 1/2 to 2 quart mould and serves 8 to 10. Garnish with preserved fruit — brandied cherries, apricots, angelica.
Baden-Baden was among the grandest of the German spa towns, and by the late nineteenth century a European place-name on a menu — Nesselrode, Metternich — served to place a dish socially. The pudding belongs to the large family of cold moulded rice creams related to riz à l'impératrice, in which sweetened rice cooked in vanilla milk is lightened with whipped cream, set with gelatine or isinglass, and turned out garnished with candied fruit. Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf. Moulded puddings of this kind suited hotel service, being made ahead, held cold, unmoulded to order and finished with preserved fruit. The folded napkin or fancy dish-paper under the pudding is a detail of period plating.