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Rice with Cream
Wash well in cold water three ounces rice; drain well, then place in a saucepan with two gills cold water, three gills cold milk, a good saltspoon salt, half saltspoon grated nutmeg and two level tablespoons fine sugar. Place on the fire and boil for thirty-five minutes, mixing once in a while with a wooden spoon to prevent burning at the bottom. Pour into a hot dish and serve with cream and fine sugar separately.
A plain milk-and-rice pudding cooked entirely on the stovetop, closer to a breakfast porridge than to a baked rice pudding. The measurements are period ones and need translating before you start.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills cold water is 1 cup; three gills cold milk is 1½ cups. Total liquid is 2½ cups to 3 ounces of rice.
- Rice by weightThree ounces is a scant ½ cup of raw rice. Use a medium- or short-grain white rice; long-grain will stay separate rather than going creamy, and parboiled rice will not release enough starch to thicken the milk.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about ¼ teaspoon. So roughly ¼ teaspoon salt and ⅛ teaspoon grated nutmeg — grate it fresh, since pre-ground nutmeg at that quantity registers as dust.
- "Boil" means simmerThis is the hinge. At a real rolling boil the milk will scorch on the bottom and boil over before the rice softens. Bring it up, then hold it at the barest simmer on the lowest burner setting, and stir more often than "once in a while" — every five minutes, scraping the bottom corners of the pan.
- Pan choiceUse a heavy-bottomed saucepan; thin aluminium or steel guarantees a scorched layer. A heat diffuser under the pan is worth using if your lowest setting is still aggressive.
- TimingThirty-five minutes is about right for short-grain rice at a low simmer, but judge by texture: the grains should be fully soft and suspended in a loose, pourable cream. It thickens noticeably as it cools, so pull it while it still looks slightly wet.
- ServingServes two as a dish on its own, three or four alongside other things. The cream and sugar go to the table separately, in the older style, so each eater sweetens to taste — worth keeping, as the two tablespoons in the pot leave it barely sweet.
Rice boiled in milk is one of the oldest sweet uses of rice in European cooking, and versions turn up in medieval manuscripts long before sugar was cheap enough to be passed at table — though the early ones are often made with almond milk rather than cow's milk. This particular version belongs to the stovetop tradition rather than the slow-baked one: no eggs, no oven, no skin on top, just rice, milk, sugar and nutmeg thickened by starch alone. Nutmeg was a common spice for milk puddings in English and American kitchens through the nineteenth century.