No. 3105

Rice Pudding a la Bagration

Pouding de Riz a la Bagration

Wash half a pound of rice; blanch it properly in plenty of water, drain and put it into a saucepan with one quart of milk and half a stick of vanilla; let it cook for forty minutes in the oven, then withdraw and suppress the vanilla; add to it three ounces of sugar, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, six yolks and one whole egg, mixing all well together. Stir in six ounces of candied fruits cut in quarter-inch dice, such as pears, greengages, pineapples, cherries, and lastly add three well-beaten egg-whites. Butter and sugar a dome-shaped cylindrical mold; fill it four-fifths full with the preparation and lay it in a saucepan with water to half its height; place it on the fire until the water boils, then in a slack oven to cook for fifty minutes. Remove the pudding from the fire, let it stand for five minutes, then unmold on a dish and cover with English cream vanilla sauce (No. 3004), having more of it served separately.

← No. 3104 Plumery Pudding Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3106 Rice Pudding, Fruit Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

A rich baked rice custard set in a mold and turned out under vanilla sauce. Everything depends on gentle heat: the mold sits in a water bath, and the oven must stay low enough that the eggs never curdle.

Slack ovenA "slack" oven is conventionally a low one, on the order of 300F or below; the book gives no figure. The earlier 40-minute cooking of the rice in milk can go at the same temperature, covered, so the milk absorbs without a skin forming.
Blanching the riceBoiling the rice briefly in plenty of water and draining it removes surface starch, which keeps the finished pudding from going gluey. Two or three minutes is enough; the rice finishes in the milk.
Half a stick of vanillaThat means half a vanilla bean, split. "Suppress the vanilla" simply means fish the pod out and discard it. A teaspoon of extract stirred in with the sugar is an acceptable substitute.
The moldA dome-shaped cylindrical mold is a charlotte or pudding mold; the recipe gives no capacity, so use one large enough that the mixture comes only four-fifths up, as the whites will lift it. Buttering and sugaring it is what lets the pudding release cleanly; the sugar forms a thin crust against the metal.
Water bathBringing the water to a boil on the stovetop before the mold goes into the oven starts the set from the outside in. Keep the water at about half the mold's height and top it up with boiling water if it drops.
EggsSix yolks plus one whole egg go in warm rice, so temper them by stirring a little of the hot rice into the eggs first. The recipe calls for the three whites well beaten; they are folded in last.
Candied fruitSix ounces of mixed candied pear, greengage, pineapple and cherry is a lot by modern taste; commercial "fruitcake mix" is a poor stand-in. Chopped candied citrus peel, glacé cherries and dried apricots work better. Tossing the dice in a little flour keeps them from sinking.
Doneness and unmoldingAfter 50 minutes the center should feel just set and a knife come out clean. The five-minute rest is not optional: it lets the pudding contract slightly so it drops from the mold in one piece.
Sauce and yieldNo. 3004 is the book's English cream vanilla sauce, i.e. a crème anglaise, cooked to a coating consistency and never boiled. On the quantities given the pudding should serve roughly eight.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a compendium of the French repertoire as it was cooked in New York, and the naming here is pure grand-cuisine convention: dishes were dedicated to patrons, diplomats and generals. The Bagration name is generally traced to the Russian princely family — Pyotr Bagration died of wounds at Borodino in 1812, and his widow and relatives were fixtures of Parisian society for decades afterward — and it attaches to a soup and a garnish as well as this pudding. The dish itself belongs to the nineteenth-century class of molded rice entremets: rice cooked soft in vanilla milk, enriched with yolks and butter, lightened with whites and studded with candied fruit, then steamed in a bain-marie so it holds a shape when turned out. Candied fruit was expensive and imported, which is part of why a pudding like this closed an elaborate dinner rather than a family supper.