Modes of preparing Rice for the Dinner or Tea Table

Pick over and wash the rice, and boil it _fifteen minutes_ in water
with salt in it. Rice is very poor unless the salt is _cooked_ into it.
Then pour off the water, and pour in good rich milk, and let it simmer
slowly till the rice is soft. There should be milk just sufficient to
make the rice of a _pudding_ consistency, so that it can be put in cups
and turned out without losing its form.

1. Fill a tea-cup with this rice, and invert it in a platter or shallow
large pudding dish, and fill the dish with cups of rice inverted. On
the summit of each mound thus made, make an opening with a teaspoon,
and lay a pile of jelly or sweetmeats. Then pour into the dish a
custard made of two eggs and a pint of milk, boiled in a tin pail in
boiling water. This looks very pretty, and is excellent.

If you have cream, take half milk and half cream, and pour into the
dish, instead of the custard.

2. Put the rice into a large bowl, and press it down hard. Then invert
the bowl in a pudding dish, and empty the rice, so as to leave it in
the shape of the bowl. Make, at regular distances, openings in the
rice, and lay in them jelly, or sweetmeats. Help some of the rice and
sweetmeats to each person in a saucer, and have a small pitcher of
sweetened cream, flavored with wine and nutmeg, and pour some into
each saucer. Or prepare a thin custard of two eggs to a pint of milk,
boiling it in a tin pail in boiling water.

3. Set the rice away till cold. Then cut it into slices half an inch
thick. Put a layer of rice in the bottom of a soup plate, and cover it
with stewed apple, or jelly, or sweetmeats half an inch thick. Continue
thus, with alternate layers of rice and jelly (or other cooked fruit)
till it is as high as you wish. Then cut the edges around smooth and
even, so as to show the stripes of fruit and rice, smooth it on the
top, and grate on white sugar, or nutmeg.

Help it in saucers, and have cream, or a thin boiled custard, to pour
on to it. If you wish to ornament it a good deal, get colored sugar
plums of various sizes, and put them in fanciful arrangements on the
top.

4. Set away boiled rice till it is cold, and so solid as to cut in
slices. Then lay in a buttered deep pudding dish alternate layers of
this rice, half an inch thick, and stewed or grated apple. Add sugar
enough to sweeten it, and spice grated or sifted on each layer of
fruit. When piled up as high as you wish, cover with rice, smooth it
with a spoon dipped in milk, and bake it from half to three quarters of
an hour. If the apples are grated raw, you must bake three quarters of
an hour. When it is done, grate white sugar over the top, and eat it
for a pudding.

Pears, plums, peaches, quinces, and all the small berries can be stewed
and used with rice in this way.

Rice can be made into rice _avalanches_ and _snow-balls_, by taking a
pudding cloth and flouring it, and laying _raw_ rice over it an inch
thick, and then put pared and cored fruit on it and draw it up and tie
it so that the rice will cook around the fruit. Tie it tight, allowing
_a little_ room for the rice to swell. Make several small ones in this
way, and they are called _snow-balls_. These are eaten with cream
sweetened and spiced, or with hard or soft pudding sauces.