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Rice Pudding
1-21-44 cup sugar teaspoon salt 2 eggs Rice may be cooked in water or milk. Stir into milk, add sugar, salt and eggs, slightly beaten. 1 tablespoon butter may be added. Flavor as eggs, slightly beaten. 1 tablespoon butter may be added. Flavor as desired. Bake or steam in buttered shallow baking dish, till firm. Yolks only may be used. Meringue may be added, if desired. 3 tablespoons shortening cup sugar
Enough survives here to work from: cooked rice stirred into sweetened milk with beaten egg, baked or steamed until set. The proportions in the original line are unreliable, so treat the method as the recipe and use standard custard ratios.
- Working proportionsA baked rice custard of this type runs about 2 cups cooked rice, 2 cups milk, 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs and 1/4 teaspoon salt. The quantities printed at the head of the entry are incomplete and should not be relied on.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven heat at all. A custard of this kind is usually baked at 325 to 350F; higher and the egg tends to curdle and weep liquid before the centre sets.
- Water bathSetting the buttered shallow dish in a pan of hot water reaching halfway up the sides helps a custard of this kind set evenly. The original offers baking and steaming as two separate options rather than specifying a water bath.
- Doneness"Till firm" is roughly 40 to 50 minutes. A knife inserted an inch from the edge should come out clean while the very centre still trembles; it finishes setting as it cools.
- Yolks onlyReckon two yolks for each whole egg, so four yolks in place of the two eggs; the set is richer and softer. Using yolks alone also makes the meringue option practical, since the whites are then already separated.
- MeringueBeat the reserved whites with about 2 tablespoons sugar per white, spread over the baked pudding, and return to a 350F oven for 12 to 15 minutes until lightly coloured.
- Flavouring'Flavor as desired' is left open. Vanilla, grated nutmeg or lemon rind, or raisins stirred in before baking are all common choices for a pudding of this type.
- YieldAbout six servings from the quantities above. Good warm or cold; it keeps three days covered in the refrigerator.
Rice puddings of this shape, cooked rice folded into a milk-and-egg custard and baked, were a staple sweet in American household cookbooks from the nineteenth century onward, and were often recommended as a way of using up cooked rice left from an earlier meal. The Metropolitan Cook Book was issued by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and distributed free to policyholders, part of a broader early-twentieth-century effort by insurers to promote thrift and nutrition among their customers, and its recipes are written in the clipped, variation-heavy style of that literature: one base method, then a list of ways to stretch or dress it. The alternatives offered here — whole eggs or yolks only, butter or not, meringue or plain — let the cook work with whatever was on hand.