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Rich Charlotte
E. M. Walker.
Blanch one-fourth pound of rice, and boil in one quart of milk, with a little sugar and vanilla; when soft, let it cool, and then mix it with one pint of whipped cream ; oil a mould and fill with a layer of rice and preserves, or marmalade, alternately; let it stand until stiff, and then turn it out.
A cold moulded rice pudding layered with preserves, from an era when "charlotte" covered almost anything set in a mould and turned out. The recipe assumes a cook who knows rice and knows moulds, so a few gaps need filling.
- Blanching the riceThis means dropping the rice into boiling water for two or three minutes, then draining it. It washes off loose starch and any dustiness before the milk goes in, and keeps the finished pudding from tasting pasty.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of rice is about half a cup plus a tablespoon of raw short- or medium-grain rice. A quart of milk is 4 cups, a pint of cream 2 cups before whipping. A round-grain pudding rice will hold the layers together better than long-grain, though the recipe does not specify.
- "A little sugar"Two to three tablespoons in the milk is right for a dessert that will be layered with sweet preserves. Vanilla here could mean either extract or a split bean simmered in the milk; half a bean, or a teaspoon of extract stirred in off the heat.
- Cool it properly before the creamThe hinge of the dish. If the rice is even warm when the whipped cream goes in, the cream deflates and the charlotte will slump instead of standing. Chill the rice to cool room temperature or colder, then fold, do not stir.
- Oiling the mouldA flavourless oil, wiped on thinly with a cloth, as the original says. Butter sets hard in the refrigerator and grips. A 2 to 2.5 quart mould or bowl suits this quantity.
- Setting and unmouldingThere is no gelatin here, so the pudding sets only by chilling and by the starch in the rice. Give it at least six hours, preferably overnight, in the refrigerator. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to release.
- YieldServes eight to ten as it stands. It is best eaten the day it is turned out, since the rice continues to firm and the preserves bleed into the layers.
"Charlotte" is one of the loosest terms in nineteenth-century dessert cookery: it covered the baked apple charlotte lined with buttered bread, the charlotte russe lined with sponge fingers and filled with Bavarian cream, and, as here, a plain moulded pudding that simply borrowed the shape and the prestige. The rice version belongs to a large family of cold moulded rice puddings that ran through Anglo-American cookbooks of the period, in which a turned-out mould looked far more impressive than the sum of its parts. Its appearance in The Home Cook Book under a contributor's name is typical of that book's method: it was compiled from recipes donated by local women, each credited, and sold to raise funds, so the collection reads as a snapshot of what the households of a particular circle actually put on the table.