“Delicious” Baked Rice Custard

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This past week, I had on my food historian hat, gave a talk in Yarmouth, Maine, and another in New Hampshire, and came home thinking about recipe collections I have, including the one assembled by another resident of North Islesboro, Elsa Bates. I barely knew Elsa who was still alive when I came to the island in 1988. Elsa was a niece of the Bunkers who lived in my house at end of the 1800s and early 1900s here in Islesboro. She was a good cook, even attended the Boston Cooking School. Her recipes were well organized and when she died, neighbors passed along her recipe collection to me including one for doughnuts from “Auntie Bunker,” who was Adrianna nicknamed Annie, who ruled in my kitchen before me.

Elsa found this recipe for Baked Rice Custard in McCall’s Magazine and clipped it out. She penned the date 10/1/72 on it and wrote “Delicious!”

Like me, Elsa was, apparently, a recipe tweaker. For this recipe, she reduced the rice to a quarter cup from one-third, reduced sugar to two-thirds from three-quarters cup, and noted that it should be baked at 325 degrees instead of 350. I can’t help wondering if she would have thought it delicious without the adjustments.

I have been in a pudding mood recently and almost never make rice pudding. In fact, we have never discussed rice pudding here in Taste Buds, so I thought I’d give this one a whirl with Elsa’s adjustments. To be truthful, it has elements of a project: the rice cooks for an hour in milk in a double boiler. Then you beat up the other ingredients, add them to the milk and rice, then bake it in a casserole set in boiling water. Since it makes eight servings, you might want to do this on a weekend and give yourself dessert for a couple of nights. Or dessert plus breakfast.

P.S. Remember a few weeks ago we were talking about ribollita? Nan Cobbey sent her favorite recipe for it, and wrote that she makes sure the bread sticks a little above the surface of the stew and she runs it under the broiler so it gets a little toasted and crisp. That sounds like a toothsome idea. And it may be spring, but it still feels like soup weather, so back we go for another, enhanced edition of ribollita.

Looking for….Crybabies, the recipe. During my talk in Yarmouth, one of my audience told me that she found a food-related reference in her family papers to “Crybabies” but no recipe for them. Was this a family nickname for something that goes by another moniker? Or are there any Crybabies in your family? Will you let me know if there are, and share the recipe if you can?

Delicious Baked Rice Custard
Serves: 8-10
 
Ingredients
  • ¼ raw white rice, preferably short grain
  • 5 cups of milk, divided
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3 eggs
  • ⅔ cups sugar
  • 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla or more to taste
Instructions
  1. In the top of a double boiler, combine the rice, four cups of milk, and salt, then cook over boiling water, stirring occasionally, until the rice is soft.
  2. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, and grease a two-quart casserole.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining cup of cold milk, plus the eggs, sugar, and vanilla. When blended, gradually add the hot milk and rice mixture, and stir.
  4. Pour into the greased casserole, and set into another baking dish and add hot water to the depth of an inch on the casserole.
  5. Bake uncovered for 50 minutes or a knife inserted one inch from the edge comes out clean.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.