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Rice Pudding
To a cup of rice boiled in a custard-kettle in a pint of water (seasoned well with salt) until dry, add a pint of milk in which a little corn starch has been dissolved, and boil again; add the yolks of two eggs beaten with half a cup of sugar, stir well together, and lastly add the juice and grated rind of one lemon. Place in a dish, and bake slowly in the oven; when done, spread over the top the whites beaten with two table-spoons sugar, and brown in oven. A cup of raisins may be added just before baking. Or, after boiling the rice with the milk, eggs, and sugar, add a lump of butter and place a layer of the rice, about an inch thick, in a buttered dish sprinkled with bread-crumbs, then a layer of peaches (either fresh or canned), repeating until dish is full, leaving rice for the last layer; bake slowly for half an hour, and when done, cover with the beaten whites, as above. Or, after preparing the rice as above, add pine-apple, chopped fine, or oranges, or dried cherries; mix thoroughly, and bake and finish as above. - Mrs. J. R. W.,
A stovetop rice pudding finished in the oven under a meringue, with three fruit variations. The method is sound; only the vessels and oven language need translating.
- Custard-kettleThis is a double boiler — an inner pan set over simmering water. Cooking the rice this way keeps it from scorching, but it is slow; a heavy saucepan over low heat with frequent stirring does the same job in less time.
- Slow oven300–325F. The pudding is already cooked when it goes in, so the oven is only setting the custard; at higher heat the egg yolks will curdle and weep. Browning the meringue at the end wants a hotter oven, around 400F for 5 to 8 minutes, or a broiler watched constantly.
- The riceA cup of rice to a pint of water cooked "until dry" is an absorption method rather than a drained one. The recipe does not say what kind of rice; medium-grain or pudding rice will give a creamier result.
- "A little corn starch"Genuinely unmeasured. One to two teaspoons dissolved in cold milk before it goes into the pan is in the right range for a pint; more than that turns the pudding pasty. Slake it cold or it will lump.
- Two eggs, separatedThe yolks go into the hot rice off the heat, or the mixture will scramble. Beat them with the sugar first, as directed, then temper by stirring a little of the hot rice in before combining.
- Lemon lastThe juice and rind go in at the end. The recipe does not say why, but acid added to hot milk earlier can curdle it, and the volatile oils in the zest fade with long cooking.
- The peach variationCanned peaches should be drained well; their syrup will thin the layers and leave the bottom soupy. Fresh peaches need peeling. Half an hour at 300–325F is enough to heat through and set.
- MeringueTwo tablespoons sugar for two whites is a soft meringue that browns quickly and will not hold overnight. Spread it to the edges of the dish so it seals and does not shrink back.
- YieldSix to eight servings; once the fruit is added the mixture will want a dish of about two quarts, with headroom for the meringue. Best warm; the meringue softens and weeps in the refrigerator.
Rice puddings run through nineteenth-century American cookbooks in dozens of forms, from plain baked rice and milk to elaborate moulded creams, and this one sits at the fancier end — a custard base, a lemon-scented body and a meringue cap, which is essentially the construction of a queen of puddings with rice standing in for breadcrumbs. The recipe treats canned peaches and pineapple as ordinary pantry items, though such mentions span several decades and fix no particular date: The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the era when commercially canned fruit had become cheap and reliable enough for a Southern household to treat it as interchangeable with fresh. The attribution to "Mrs. J. R. W." is typical of the book's method, which gathered contributions from named and initialled correspondents rather than presenting a single authorial voice, and the three alternate versions tacked on at the end might be read, speculatively, as one cook's accumulated variations written down at once.