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Rice and Apple Pudding
Mrs. R. Beaty.
One cup of rice boiled very soft; stir well to keep from burning; eight large apples, stewed ; press the pulp through a sieve, mix it thoroughly with the rice; add half a teaspoonful of butter and yolks of two eggs well beaten; sweeten to taste. Bake. Beat the whites of the eggs and put on the top. It is nicer almost cold.
A plain nursery pudding of the sort that filled out a Victorian supper table: boiled rice, apple pulp, eggs, and a meringue lid. The original assumes you know how long to bake it and at what heat, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- The riceOne cup of raw short- or medium-grain rice boiled "very soft" means simmered in plenty of water or milk until the grains collapse — roughly 25-30 minutes, well past the point where you would stop for a pilaf. Milk gives a richer set; stir often, as the recipe warns, because the starch catches quickly.
- Eight large applesCall it 3.5 to 4 lb, which will give you something in the region of 3 to 4 cups of sieved pulp. Stew them peeled and cored in a splash of water until they fall apart, then sieve; a tart cooking apple such as Bramley or Granny Smith suits the unsweetened base better than a modern eating apple.
- Half a teaspoonful of butterThis looks like a misprint or extreme thrift — half a teaspoon in a pudding this size is negligible. A tablespoon or two is closer to what the texture wants, but the original is what it is; take it as a hint of richness rather than a measurement.
- Sweeten to tasteNo sugar quantity is given because it depended on the apples. Start at about half a cup for this volume, tasting the warm apple-rice mixture before the yolks go in.
- Oven heatThe original says only "Bake," with no temperature or time. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it: reckon on 30-40 minutes in a buttered dish, until set at the centre and barely trembling.
- The meringueBeat the two whites to soft peaks with a couple of tablespoons of sugar — the original omits sugar, which gives a dry, squeaky topping — spread to the edges of the dish so it seals, and return it to the oven for 10-15 minutes until pale gold.
- Serving"Nicer almost cold" is sound: the rice firms up and the apple flavour comes forward as it cools. Let it stand at room temperature an hour or so. Serves six to eight.
Rice puddings sweetened with fruit pulp run through nineteenth-century North American cookbooks as economy dishes — rice was cheap and shelf-stable, apples came by the barrel in autumn and kept in the cellar through winter, and two eggs went a long way. The meringue lid, made from the whites left over after the yolks went into the body of the pudding, shows the same thrift found in lemon meringue pie and queen of puddings: nothing in the egg was wasted. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named local women, which is why this one carries Mrs. R. Beaty's name and her assumptions — that a cook knows what "bake" means without being told a temperature.