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Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding
Wash in three different cold waters half pound Italian rice. Drain well, place it in a saucepan with one quart cold milk, a gill cold water and a saltspoon salt. As soon as it comes to a boiling point shift the pan on the corner of the range, being careful to mix well with a wooden spoon. Then let slowly simmer for one hour, mixing every five minutes to prevent burning at the bottom. Remove the pan from the range. Pour ten drops vanilla essence and the same of orange-water flavor. Mix well, then add half pound granulated sugar. Mix well again. Break in four whole raw eggs, pour in a gill sweet cream, thoroughly mix with the wooden spoon. Pour the preparation into a pastry pan two inches high, place in a slow oven and bake for thirty minutes. Remove, lay the pan on another cold one and serve either hot or cold.
A stovetop rice pudding finished in the oven, which gives it a set custard body rather than the loose creaminess of an all-stovetop version. The one thing to get right is the eggs: they go into rice that has just come off the heat, and if the mixture is still near boiling they will scramble.
- Temper before you add the eggsLet the cooked rice stand off the heat for five to ten minutes, until it is hot but no longer steaming hard, before breaking in the eggs. Beat the eggs with the cream first and stir them in a little at a time so nothing curdles.
- A gillHalf a cup. The recipe uses one for the water at the start and one for the cream at the end.
- Weights in cupsHalf a pound of rice is a generous cup, and half a pound of granulated sugar is about one and one-eighth cups. The sugar is on the sweet side by current taste; three-quarters of a cup makes a pudding most people will prefer.
- Italian riceArborio or carnaroli, the same short-grain rice used for risotto. Its starch is what thickens the milk. Washing in three waters removes surface starch; skip it if you want a thicker pudding.
- Slow oven'Slow' is usually taken to mean somewhere around 300F. Thirty minutes at that sort of temperature sets the custard gently; the centre should still wobble slightly when you take it out, since it firms as it cools.
- Orange-water flavorOrange flower water, sold in Middle Eastern groceries and better supermarkets. Ten drops is a small amount and it is easy to overdo, so measure rather than pour.
- The panA shallow baking dish about two inches deep, or any dish that holds the mixture at a depth of an inch and a half or so. Depth matters more than shape: a deep dish will not set through in half an hour.
- SimmeringAn hour of slow cooking with a stir every five minutes is not padding. Milk and rice scorch readily, and the shift to the cooler corner of a coal range is the equivalent of turning a gas burner to its lowest setting, with a heat diffuser if your stove runs hot.
- YieldServes eight generously. Cooling the pan on a second cold pan, as directed, stops the carryover cooking at the base.
Rice pudding in one form or another runs through European cookery from the medieval period onward, when rice was an expensive import used mostly in sweet dishes thickened with milk and almonds. By 1900 rice was cheap and the pudding had become nursery and boarding-house food in England and America, which is why a book aimed at hotel and restaurant standards calls it "old-fashioned" and then quietly dresses it up: Italian risotto rice rather than any rice, cream as well as milk, four whole eggs, vanilla and orange flower water. The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe reads like a professional's version of a plain domestic dish, including the instruction to shift the pan to the cool corner of the range, a maneuver that only makes sense on a coal or wood stove with a hot centre and cooler edges.