Month: March 2023

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Rice Custard Pudding

VintageJenny

Custard pudding appeared on tables regularly from before 1900 to after 1940. It was considered a healthy way to use milk and eggs. Custard was an easy-to-digest food for invalids. (You can still get custard pudding in the U.S. hospitals if you’re lucky.) And frankly, it was — and continues to be — delicious. Sue makes Rice Custard Pudding for her 20th cooking lesson. This is a recipe she will be making for the rest of her life.

(This is the 20th lesson from the book When Sue Began to Cook. If you are just now joining us, clicking the book title will transport you back to Lesson 1 so you don’t miss any of the evolving story.)

Sue plans to serve her pudding for dessert after dinner, but this also made a respectable breakfast dish. Her friend Ruth Ann takes hers home directly, perhaps for a special luncheon treat.

Notes from Sue’s Rice Custard Pudding Diary

“When I’m big and have a hosue of my own, I’m going to have boiled rice — lots of it — about once a week, because you can make the most fascinating things out of what is left over!” I told Ruth Ann this morning. “There’s Spanish Rice and Rice Custard Pudding, and Rice Croquettes (only we haven’t learned how to make them yet), and Green Peppers Stuffed with Rice…”

“The only sad part about that plan,” said Ruth Ann, “Is the plain boiled rice the first day. Who wants to eat that? Not I!” And she looked very scornful.

“Boiled rice isn’t so bad,” laughed Mother, “if it’s well made. It must be soft and good, not too dry, and every grain must stand out distinctly. Why, I think it’s quite a delicacy! But it does have to be good and warm, and have some melted butter on the top. And then of course there must be plenty of cream to eat with it.”

“Or gravy!” said Robin, who was hanging around as usual. “Let’s have the girls make gravy for their next lesson!”

“You act as if our cooking lessons ought to be planned just for you!” I exclaimed. “I’m learning to cook so that I can help Mother run the house —”

“Well, I’m part of the house, ain’t I?” said Robin.

I ignored the remark. “And Ruth Ann’s learning how so she can help her Mother.”

“And Mother likes plain boiled rice; I remember now!” said Ruth Ann with shining eyes. “Aunt Betty, I will learn to like it, and to make it your way!”

Print Recipe

Rice Custard Pudding

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924
Course: Breakfast, Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, pudding, rice, Twenties recipes, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs lightly beaten together
  • ⅓ cup sugar
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1¼ cup boiled rice Mother had this left over.
  • 1 tbsp melted butter
  • ½ cup raisins looked over and washed

Instructions

  • Mother had us each take a big mixing bowl and break our eggs into it. Then we beat them up very light with a Dover egg beater.
  • When they were light enough we measured the sugar, salt, vanilla, milk, boiled rice, melted butter and raisins. (We looked over the raisins first of all, and washed them by holding them in a little colander under the cold water faucet. We let the water run throuigh them for quite a little while and we stirred them around.)
  • We dumped all of these things, one by one, in the mixing bowl, and stirred them all up together.
  • Then Mother had us each butter a baking dish and pour the rice mixture into it. Then we set our baking dishes in a moderate [375 degrees F] oven and baked the Rice Custard Pudding for thirty minutes.
  • When it was done, we let it get very cold. (Father says deliver him from warm rice pudding!) Ruth Ann took hers home with her. I saved mine for dinner because I wanted Father to have some.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Mother’s Best Gingerbread

VintageJenny

On the last Saturday of March, we find Sue and Ruth Ann busy at work on their 19th cooking lesson. This week Sue makes Mother’s Best Gingerbread, with more ingredients than any she’s used before. This is the 19th lesson from the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. If you’re just finding the series, click the book title to see the first installment. This is the third in a series of cookbooks that tell a story. Known as the Bettina series, in this third and final cookbook-storybook we follow Bettina’s young daughter Sue as she learns her way around the kitchen.

It’s not surprising that Sue makes Mother’s best gingerbread at the beginning of Spring. Gingerbread was incredibly popular in the United States; in fact, one 1934 article in Woman’s Home Companion listed enough variations that cooks could make a different gingerbread every week of the year! That’s a lot of molasses and ginger.

Gingerbread Notes from Sue’s Kitchen Diary

Well, the McCarthy children had the best lunch today that they’ve had in a long time.

When our gingerbread was all hot and fresh and perfect, just out of the oven, Ruth Ann decided to cut up hers into big delicious wedges for the McCarthys. (Mine was to be saved for dinner tonight. Father likes it for dessert with whipped cream on top.)

“You want to have a regular orgy of giving, do you?” smiled Mother. (I looked up the word in the dictionary and I know what it means now but I didn’t then.) [Note: if you click the link, it refers to definition 2.]

“Well, you certainly may do just as you like, Ruthie. I’m sure our gingerbread won’t hurt those children one bit.”

“Because it won’t much more than go around,” I said sadly. “It would be fun really to fill them up for once, but I guess we can’t.”

“Still, we can cut it into pretty big pieces,” said Ruth Ann eagerly. “And who knows? Maybe it will taste so good to Gladys and Maxine and Hazel that they’ll long to become good cooks themselves. And maybe they’ll want to clean up the house too, and make their kitchen look as pretty and cosy as Aunt Bettina’s!”

Ruth Ann thinks our kitchen is just perfect. She has often told me so, and I think it’s pretty nice myself. A pleasant kitchen is really the best part of a house. The McCarthy’s love to come here, and they were certainly glad to get the gingerbread (which disappeared in about the twinkling of an eye). However, I can’t say that Gladys or Hazel or Maxine showed any signs of wanting to improve their own condition any. Though Ruth Ann and I plan that as soon as we’ve learned all there is to know about cooking and keeping house, we’ll become neighborhood missionaries and teach it all to them.

Print Recipe

Mother’s Best Gingerbread

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Bread, Snack, Tea time
Cuisine: American
Keyword: baking, Bettina, snack bread, teatime, Twenties

Ingredients

  • ½ cup lard or butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar without lumps
  • 1 egg
  • ½ cup molasses
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2½ cups flour general all purpose
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 1 tsp powdered ginger (ground ginger)
  • ½ tsp powdered cloves (ground cloves)
  • ½ tsp mace the ground cooking spice
  • ¼ tsp powdered nutmeg
  • ¼ tsp salt

Instructions

  • Mother said not to let this long list of ingredients frighten us, because they didn't mean that gingerbread was awfully hard to make. But I think, after all, that it is the hardest thing we have made yet.
    We pur our lard in a big mixing bowl and creamed it, which of course means that we mashed it down with a big holey spoon till it was soft. Then we added the sugar and the egg (broken in whole) and kept on mixing till it was all the same yellow color.
  • Then we added the molasses and the milk and stirred it up very hard for two minutes.
  • Next Mother had us put the flour, soda and all the other things (the dry ingredients, she calls them) in the flour sifter and sift them all through together. Then we added them to the other things in the mixing bowl.
  • Then came the hardest work of all, beating this all up thoroughly together for about two minutes. Mother says it makes it lighter to beat it.
  • Then we learned something new. Mother had us each take some white waxed paper and cut it in a square just a little larger than the bottom of a square cake pan. Then we each fitted our square into our cake pan. The paper was big enough to stick up abour half an inch on each side of the cake pan, but didn't come to the top. Mother said it must not come to the top because the gingerbread must have the sides of the pan to stick to. We asked her if she didn't want us to grease the sides of the pan but she said "No, then the gingerbread wouldn't stick. It is less apt to fall if it sticks a little."
  • After we had put the paper in the pans, we poured in the gingerbread batter and then we baked it in a moderate [375 degrees F] oven for twenty-five minutes. When the twenty-five minutes were up, Mother showed us how to test the gingerbread with a clean broom straw. We pulled straws out of the broom and washed and dried them and then each of us stuck one down in the gingerbread. Mother said if the gingerbread was done, the straws would come out clean, without any batter sticking to them. They came out clean and so we knew it was done.