Recipe
1900s Baked Rice Pudding
Creamy baked rice pudding with nutmeg: a thrifty dessert from early twentieth-century American and British tables.
Context
Rice pudding used leftover rice or a handful of raw rice stretched with milk.
Slow baking forms a brown skin on top that many period cooks prized. Raisins were optional thrift additions when fruit was scarce. Serve warm or cold.
Ingredients
- ½ cup uncooked short-grain or medium rice
- 4 cups whole milk
- ⅓ cup sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp vanilla
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ½ cup raisins (optional)
- 1 tbsp butter
Instructions
- Heat oven to 300°F (150°C). Butter a 1½- to 2-quart baking dish.
- Stir rice, milk, sugar, salt, vanilla, nutmeg, and raisins in the dish. Dot with butter.
- Bake uncovered about 2 hours, stirring once or twice in the first hour, until rice is tender and the top is golden.
- Rest 10 minutes before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.