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Rice Custard
Mrs. G. M. Dickerman.
To half a cup of rice, add one quart of milk. and a little salt; steam one hour, or until quite soft; beat the yolks of four eggs with four tablespoons of white sugar ; add this just before taking off the rice; stir in thoroughly, but do not let it boil any more; flavour with vanilla. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, with sugar; after putting the mixture into the pudding dish in which you serve it, put the whites over it, and let it slightly brown in the oven.
A stovetop rice pudding finished with a meringue cap, closer to a stirred custard than a baked one. The whole thing turns on the moment the yolks go in.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksPull the rice off the heat before stirring in the yolk-and-sugar mixture, and let the residual heat set it. Bring it back to a simmer and the eggs scramble into grainy threads that no amount of stirring will smooth out.
- "Steam one hour"With a quart of milk this most likely means a double boiler or a covered bowl set over simmering water rather than a steamer basket, though the recipe does not say. Milk over direct heat for an hour will scorch on the bottom; over water it will not. Reckon on roughly an hour or a little more, stirring occasionally, until the grains are collapsing.
- RiceUse a short or medium grain rice, which releases starch and thickens the milk. Long grain or converted rice stays separate and gives you rice floating in milk rather than custard.
- Sugar for the whitesThe original leaves the meringue sugar unmeasured. One to two tablespoons per white, added gradually once the whites are foamy, is the usual range; the higher end holds its shape better through browning.
- Browning the meringueA hot oven, 400 to 425F, for 5 to 8 minutes, or 350F for 12 to 15 if you want the meringue cooked more thoroughly through. Watch it; the difference between pale gold and scorched is under a minute at the higher heat.
- Consistency when hotIt will look loose coming off the stove and firms considerably as it cools. Do not be tempted to cook it down further.
- YieldA quart of milk and half a cup of rice makes roughly six servings. Serve warm or at room temperature; it thickens further if chilled, though the meringue will weep.
Rice puddings of this kind sit at the meeting point of two older traditions: the long European practice of simmering rice in sweetened milk, and the nineteenth-century fashion for topping a soft pudding with a sweetened meringue, a treatment generally associated with the English "queen of puddings." The technique here is a custard technique rather than a baking one: the yolks thicken, the whites decorate. The attribution to Mrs. G. M. Dickerman is characteristic of the community cookbook, a form that flourished in North America from the 1860s and 1870s onward, in which each contributor's name stood behind her receipt.