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French Rice Pudding
Mrs. D. McCraney.
Steam or carefully cook one cup full of rice. Meanwhile take six grated tart apples, yolks of four eggs, one cup of sugar, nutmeg to taste one glass best wine, and one lemon, part of juice of which you reserve for whites of eggs; bake these, well whipped together, in the oven. Then form a pyramid of layers of rice and the apple mixture, making the first and last of rice ; then take the whites of the eggs whipped stiff and flavoured with the lemon juice; cover the whole evenly with a long bladed knife dipped in cold water; sift and put white sugar over the whole, and place in the oven until of a delicate brown colour. If the sugar be not sifted on top, the surface is only glazed and pasty in appearance.
A layered rice-and-apple pudding finished with a baked meringue. The original assumes you know how a meringue behaves, so the order of operations matters more than any single measurement.
- The hinge: bake the apple mixture first, aloneGrated apple, yolks, sugar and wine go into the oven as a custard until set and thick. The book gives no temperature or time, so a moderate oven and a shallow dish are a modern reading. Only then is it layered with the rice; if you assemble first, the raw yolks slump through the rice and nothing holds a pyramid shape.
- "One glass best wine"A wine glass of the period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a scant quarter cup. A sweet or fortified wine is the likely intent, though the recipe does not say; some of the alcohol will bake off.
- One cup of riceMeasured dry, this yields about three cups cooked, enough for the rice layers the recipe calls for (it specifies only that the first and last be rice). Short or medium grain gives a mixture that packs into a mound; long grain stays loose. The recipe does not say whether to cook it in water or milk, and either would suit.
- Grated applesSix tart apples grated coarse is roughly 3-4 cups, and some of that liquid will cook away. Grate them last and toss with a little lemon juice so they do not brown while you work.
- Meringue and oven heatFour whites whipped stiff with lemon juice want a moderate oven. The recipe gives no setting and no time, only "until of a delicate brown colour", so judge it by eye. Too hot an oven browns the peaks before the interior firms.
- Sifting the sugarThe final note is the most practical line in the recipe. Sugar shaken through a fine sieve lands as a dry dust that crisps into a shell; spooned on in a heap it dissolves in the surface moisture and bakes to the "pasty" glaze the author warns against. Granulated works, but superfine is better.
- Smoothing the surfaceA long thin blade dipped in cold water between strokes keeps the meringue from dragging. A large offset spatula, wiped and re-wetted, does the same job.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number; the quantities suggest six to eight. Assemble on a shallow ovenproof platter rather than in a deep dish, since the pyramid has to go back into the oven and then be cut at the table. Serve within an hour or two of baking, while the meringue still has bite.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada," and like most subscription cookbooks of its kind it prints each contribution under the donor's name, which is why Mrs. D. McCraney's signature sits above the rice. The "French" in the title is doing what it usually did in nineteenth-century North American cookery: signalling ambition rather than provenance. What distinguishes this from an English nursery rice pudding is the construction, a moulded or heaped tower of rice alternating with a fruit puree and sealed under meringue. Apples, rice, eggs and a little sweet wine were all within reach of a comfortable Canadian household in the 1870s, and the recipe's real luxury is labour: grating six apples, whipping whites by hand, and shaping the whole thing into a pyramid.