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Rice, Orange Pudding
Wash in cold water, drain and place in a saucepan five ounces good rice with a pint and half cold milk, two ounces sugar, a saltspoon salt and the rind of a sound orange very finely chopped up; place on the range and boil for forty minutes, being careful to stir at the bottom every five minutes to prevent burning. Remove, add half pint cream, two eggs and four egg yolks, one by one, continually stirring while adding and for four minutes after being added. Lightly butter a quart pudding mould, pour the rice into it, cover the mould, place it in a saucepan with boiling water up to half the height of the mould and bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes; take from the oven, remove the cover and turn upside down on a dish without removing the mould. Just before serving remove the mould, decorate the dish with candied oranges and serve.
A moulded rice custard rather than a spoon pudding — the hinge is temperature control when the eggs go in, and enough time in the water bath to set six eggs' worth of custard firmly enough to unmould.
- Cool the rice before the eggsForty minutes of boiling leaves the rice near 200F, hot enough to scramble two eggs and four yolks on contact. Take the pan off the heat, stir in the cream first to drop the temperature, then beat in the eggs one at a time as directed.
- Measures in modern termsFive ounces of rice is about ¾ cup; a pint and a half of milk is 3 cups; two ounces sugar is ¼ cup; half a pint of cream is 1 cup. A saltspoon is ¼ teaspoon.
- Which riceUse a short or medium grain rice — arborio, carnaroli or plain pudding rice. Long grain breaks down less and gives a looser, more separate-grained set, so the turned-out pudding is likelier to slump.
- Moderate oven350F. The mould sits in a saucepan of boiling water reaching halfway up its side; keep the water at a bare simmer, not a boil, or the outer custard curdles.
- Twenty minutes is not enoughTwenty minutes may not be enough -- Although the rice goes in hot, a full quart mould of custard-bound rice will often want considerably longer than twenty minutes at 350F. Cook until the centre reaches 170-175F and a knife inserted comes out clean; a mould pulled too early will slump on the dish.
- Rest before unmouldingThe instruction to uncover, invert onto a dish and leave the mould in place until serving is sound; 15 to 20 minutes of resting lets the custard firm and loosen. Run a thin knife round the rim before lifting the mould away.
- Orange rindTake only the coloured zest, finely chopped or grated; any white pith boiled for forty minutes turns the milk bitter. Candied orange peel or thin candied slices make the garnish.
- YieldA quart mould serves roughly six to eight. The recipe implies serving it soon after it comes from the oven.
Filippini's International Cook Book collects the repertoire of a chef who worked in New York restaurant kitchens, and this reads as a French pastry-kitchen dish rather than a nursery one: the gâteau de riz, rice simmered in sweetened milk, enriched with cream and a heavy proportion of yolks, set in a mould in a water bath and turned out whole. It sits near riz à l'impératrice, though that is a cold, gelatine-set preparation. The egg count follows the usual logic of such custards — whole eggs for structure, extra yolks for richness and colour — and in a professional kitchen surplus whites had other uses. The candied orange garnish suits a restaurant dessert; plainer household rice puddings of the period generally went without the cream, yolks and mould.