The Introduction of the Backup Backup Snack

I burned the backup snack. This is a delicate situation because this week’s recipe is from 1796, or possibly even earlier because it’s from The First American Cookbook by Amelia Simmons. I have a good idea of the food people served in the 1950s or 1960s, but I have NO CLUE what people ate when America was just a baby country. But sandwiched between the Tongue Pie and Carrot Pudding recipes, I found a very normal-looking Rice Pudding Recipe. And since I made fish Jell-O recently, I decided to give our stomachs a rest.

There were several variations of Rice Pudding in the cookbook, including one with raisins and one with wine, I just chose the basic one since I’ve never eaten rice pudding. I definitely took some liberties on this recipe because I could barely read the recipe, but I also feel like the cooks of that era would appreciate our modern conveniences. Sandra Lee would be proud, at the very least.

Ingredients:

1 frozen pie crust

1 tub of rice pudding

Vanilla

Pumpkin pie spice

1 egg, beaten

The original recipe has you boil a quarter pound of rice, a stick of cinnamon, and milk, then add 8 eggs, nutmeg, and rosewater. All I did is add vanilla and pumpkin pie spice to a tub of pre-made rice pudding, Thanks Kozy Shack!

I pre-baked the pie crust for 10 minutes and then poured the lumpy rice pudding mixture into the pie crust. If you’ve never seen it before, rice pudding does not look appetizing. It looks like something you’d cough up when you have a bad cold. At the same time as I made the pudding, I put together an apple crumble as the backup snack. I brushed the top of the rice pudding with an egg wash, and then I baked both for about 20 minutes in a 350-degree oven.

Neither the rice pudding nor the crumble was as perfectly browned as I wanted, so I made the ill-fated decision to broil them both for 2 minutes. HUGE MISTAKE. While the rice pudding made it out safely, the entire top of the apple crumble looked like lava that had started to cool. However, the whole kitchen smelled like delicious Thanksgiving desserts, even if it was a bit smoky. I *may* have scraped the burnt part off the top of the crumble and baked it again.

I had a friend over for brunch, so I made a backup backup snack of brie en croute. I added a pineapple-mango marmalade and some walnuts and baked it at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. The brie didn't even last us an hour. After the desserts cooled, we dished up some of the pie. Mark stole a bite directly from my plate, according to his tradition, and actually liked it. And my friend Mel loved it so much, she had seconds and I sent a to-go box home with her! A Southern Hash first!

Final rating: The texture was not as disgusting as I expected. And it tasted like a fall-spiced vanilla custard pie. Delicious! I might actually make this again.

So now we have evidence that food was pretty normal pre-gelatin salad era. Something just went horribly wrong between 1796 and 1950.