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Fruit Rice
Put one breakfast cupful of well-washed rice into a saucepan with six tablespoonfuls of moist sugar, a tablespoonful of butter and three pints of milk, and boil gently until tender, stirring it occasionally. Rinse out a mould with cold water, then line it round the bottom and sides with any kind of canned fruit, pour the rice gently into the prepared mould, being very careful not to disarrange the fruit, and set it in a cold place. Whip one pint of thick cream with the juice of the fruit. When quite set turn the contents of the mould out onto a fancy dish, pour the whipped cream over and round it, and serve. The cream should not be whipped until a half an hour before needed.
A moulded rice pudding of the old English school, set cold and turned out. Nothing here is difficult, but the ratios and the setting time both need translating.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz; treat it as one standard measuring cup of raw rice. The recipe as written makes a large mould serving eight to ten.
- Moist sugarMoist sugar is unrefined or partly refined sugar still damp with molasses, closest today to light brown sugar. Six tablespoons is about 3 oz; plain granulated works but gives a paler, less caramelly pudding.
- The riceUse a short or medium grain rice, not long grain. The pudding sets because the starch releases into the milk, and a firm long-grain rice will leave you with grains in thin milk rather than a sliceable mass.
- Three pints of milkSix cups of milk to one cup of rice is a very loose ratio by modern standards, and it is meant to be: the mixture must be soupy going into the mould so it settles around the fruit without breaking it. Expect 45 to 60 minutes at a bare simmer, stirred often, and stop when the rice is tender and the milk thick but still pourable.
- ScorchingMilk and sugar over direct heat catch quickly. Use a heavy pan on the lowest workable flame, or set the pan over simmering water if you would rather not watch it.
- Rinsing the mouldThe cold-water rinse is the unmoulding trick, not a cleaning step. A film of water between metal and pudding lets it release; do not dry the mould afterwards.
- Setting time"A cold place" means the refrigerator, and it needs a good four hours, better overnight. The rice sets by starch and cooling alone, with no gelatine, so a warm mould will slump when turned out.
- The creamWhipping cream with fruit syrup thins it. Whip the pint to soft peaks first, then fold in the juice a spoonful at a time, tasting as you go. The half-hour instruction still holds, since a loosened cream will weep if it stands.
- Canned fruitDrain the fruit well and pat it dry before lining the mould, and reserve the syrup for the cream. Peach halves, apricots and pitted cherries hold their shape; berries collapse into the rice.
Moulded rice puddings were common sweet-course fare in late nineteenth-century hotel and household cookery on both sides of the Atlantic, and belong to the same family as the French riz ice-style moulded rice desserts, of which riz l'impératrice is the grandest. The canned fruit suits the period: by the 1890s American canneries were producing peaches, apricots and cherries in syrup in quantity, and cookbooks of the period use them freely in cold desserts. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, compiled his 1896 book from the hotel's kitchens and from the broader repertoire a well-run household was expected to know, and a dish like this sits comfortably in the second category: cheap in materials, impressive on the table, and dependent on the cook's patience with the mould.