MILK POTTAGE OR FARMER'S RICE.—
Take some rich milk, and put it on to boil in a pot of sufficient size. When it has begun to boil, stir in, by degrees, enough of wheat flour to make it about as thick as the general consistence of rice milk, and boil it well, stirring it frequently down to the bottom. Add a few blades of mace, or some powdered cinnamon. Knead together some flour and fresh butter, forming a lump of white paste. Divide the paste into small round dumplings about the size of a cent, and put them to boil with the milk. When the pottage is well boiled, take it up, and transfer it to a tureen or deep white-ware dish, and make it very sweet with good brown sugar. Grate some nutmeg over the surface.
This is an excellent addition to a winter supper-table, and is much liked by children, for whom it is also good at the end of a plain dinner. As a substitute for rice milk, it is better and more wholesome than rice itself.
PLAIN RICE PUDDING.—
Pick some rice, carefully removing from it the husks, and all impurities; and if you find it the least sour or musty, throw it away, and get some that is perfectly good. Wash it through two or three waters, till it drains off quite clean. Stir a quarter of a pound of this rice into a quart of good rich milk. If the milk is poor and thin, and has been skimmed till it is blue, or mixed with water, the pudding will be poor accordingly. In the country where cream is easily to be obtained, add some to the milk which you use for the rice pudding. Stir in also a quarter of a pound of good brown sugar, and a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Set the pudding into an oven, and bake till a brown skin covers the surface, and the rice is quite soft, which you may ascertain by lifting a bit of the brown skin from the edge and trying the rice. Eat it warm or cold. It is usual in the country to put several of these rice puddings into the oven on baking days.
They will be greatly improved by the addition of two or three beaten eggs, and a few bits of fresh butter, stirred in with the rice and sugar. Also powdered cinnamon. Rice is in itself so tasteless, that it requires good flavoring.
PLAIN BOILED RICE PUDDING.—
Pick, wash, and drain a pound of rice. Moisten it with a quart of milk. Have ready a pound of seedless raisins. Dredge them well all over with flour to prevent their sinking. Stir them gradually into the rice and milk. Boil it in a cloth, leaving ample space for it to swell. Keep the water very hot all the time. Eat it with butter and sugar, seasoned with ground cinnamon.