Rice puddings

My grandmother's recipe, baked in her rice pudding bowl (left). Another baked for 4 hours adding milk every half hour until extremely thick. Or boiled around an apple in a cloth. Or a c1800 MD manuscript recipe boiled with suet. Or used rice flour. Or burnt rice...


August 12 is National Rice Pudding Day, so... here are some rice puddings made using different methods.

Sliced like pie, baked Glasse 1747

To make a rice pudding.
Take a quarter of a Pound of Rice, put it into a Sauce-pan, with a Quart of new Milk, a Stick of Cinnamon, stir it often to keep it from sticking to the Sauce-pan. When it is boiled thick, pour it into a Pan, and stir in a quarter of a Pound of fresh Butter, and Sugar to your Palate; grate in half a Nutmeg, and add three or four Spoonfuls of Rose-water, stir all well together; when it is cold, beat up eight Eggs, with half the Whites, beat it all well together, butter a Dish and pour it in, and bake it. You may lay a Puff-paste first all over the Dish; for Change put in a few Currans and Sweetmeats, if you chuse it.
[did not use a pie crust]
The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, 1747

Baked for 4 hours Howard 1873

Belvidere Rice Pudding
Two quarts of new milk. [ 8 C]
One gill of rice. [1/2 C]
One tea-cupful of brown sugar. [3/4 C]
One stick of cinnamon about three inches in length.

Wash the rice to remove the floury particles, and put it into the oven, in the dish in which it is to be served, with the sugar, cinnamon, and half of the milk, reserving the other half to add, a little at a time, as the first stews away.

It requires to stew slowly, not boil, from three and a half to four hours, and when finished, should be rather thick, and look like rich yellow cream.

No milk must be added the last half hour, as it should be covered with brown skin when sent to table. It should not be stirred or disturbed, except by the addition of the milk, while in the oven.
[--the rice becomes almost like tapioca, very nice]
Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen by Mrs. B. C. Howard - Jane Grant (Gilmor) Howard HERE

Rice Flour Carolina Housewife, 1855

Rice Custard
Mix a pint of milk, half a pint of cream, one ounce of rice flour, half a dozen bitter almonds, blanched and pounded, with two table-spoonfuls of rose-water; sweeten with loaf-sugar, and stir it over the fire till it nearly boils; then add the well-beaten yolks of three eggs; let it simmer for about one minute, stirring all the time. Pour it into a dish or cups, with sugar and nutmeg over it.
House and Home: or The Carolina Housewife: by a lady of Charleston [Sarah Rutledge] in blog post HERE

Boil around apple in bag SC manu 1805

Snow Balls
Swell rice in milk, strain it off, and having pared, & coared apples, put the rice around them, tying each up in a cloth; put a clove or cinamon in each, & boil them well.
Anna Paulina Schober manuscript (1805-1821), Salem, NC.

This dish was made during Kay Moss's class at John C. Campbell Folk School in western NC, back in 2008, so the recipe for Carolina Snow Balls, is from her book The Backcountry Housewife.

Burnt Rice Mrs. Charles Darwin 1839-

Burnt Rice
Wash a small tin cupful of Rice and Simmer it in new milk till soft. Add an ounce of Butter the yolks of three eggs 1/4 of Shugar [sic], then beat the Whites of 3 Eggs to a froth, and mix them with the Rice, lay it in a flat dish sift some sugar over it and salamander it till brown.
Mrs. Charles Darwin's Recipe Book by Dusha Bateson and Weslie Janeway. More at my blog post HERE

OTHER PUDDINGS

Lemon Pudding, Blueberry Batter Puddding, Spring Pudding (rhubarb), Muffin Pudding, Irish Potato Pudding, Burnt Rice, and Burnt Custard. Puddings could also be cakes (Plum Puddings, Elkridge Huckleberry Pudding), scrapple-form (Puddin’), pies (Pumpkin or Sweet Potato), and even ice cream (Nesselrode Pudding). I have not tried rice pudding in casings, but have stuffed sausages, so want to try Robert May’s The Acomplifht Cook, 1658.

UPCOMING TALKS

Noah's Pudding, a Turkish Dessert. Atlantic Institute SC Jan 2022 HERE. TAPE HERE

A short history of English Puddings. “Hear about the first Roman puddings, learn about the importance of the pudding cloth, discover the strange pudding names and watch a live demonstration of a pudding been made” in an 1830s London kitchen. Paul Couchman. The Regency Town House UK Se 2020 TAPE HERE

Calendar of virtual food history talks HERE

©2021 Patricia Bixler Reber
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