Puddings are an interesting food that can be a lot more varied and complex than you’d think.
These days, the first thing a person thinks of when they think about pudding is the dessert that comes in a little plastic cup that fits perfectly into a child’s (or adult’s) lunch box. Chocolate, tapioca, vanilla, butterscotch – there’s a flavor for just about anyone. However, puddings haven’t always been a dessert staple.
A few hundred years ago, pudding could be a sweet or savory dish as a pudding was a catch-all word for food consisting of ingredients that were sealed inside a dough and boiled. For example, one recipe for a steak pudding dates back to 1788 and other puddings would call for ingredients like peas or carrots. Savory puddings still exist of course, such as the black pudding that’s an important piece of the full English breakfast.
This week, we’re focusing on a sweet dessert pudding with variations dating back hundreds of years.
Rice Pudding
This week’s recipe comes from the University of Wyoming’s “Black Tie and Cowboy Boots: Timeless Traditions of the New West,” but rice puddings have been enjoyed for generations and variations of the dish go back hundreds of years. In fact, rice pudding was one of President Ulysses S. Grant’s favorite foods. Yes, the recipe is still available too. While it was favored by a U.S. president, rice pudding was a treat that could be enjoyed by a wide range of people, from rich to poor.
Thankfully, spices that were once only available to the rich are easier to come by these days.
What you’ll need:
- 2 eggs
- 2 1/4 cups of milk
- 2/3 cup of sugar
- 1 1/2 cups of cooked white rice
- 1/2 cup of raisins
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
- A dash of ground nutmeg
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, then whisk the eggs in a medium bowl until they’re frothy. Whisk in the milk and sugar. Add the rice, raisins, and vanilla and mix well. Pour the mixture into a buttered 2-quart baking dish and sprinkle the nutmeg on top. Place the baking dish into a shallow baking pan and add 1 inch of hot water to the larger pan. Bake for 1 hour. Remove the pudding dish from the pan and stir, lifting the pudding from the bottom of the dish. Return the pudding dish to the water bath and bake for another 10 minutes. You can serve it warm or chilled.
