Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

Wash the rice in three waters, and soak it half an hour in cold water ; then pour off this, and add fresh water, and let the dish stand on the back part of the range until it becomes blood warm. Now pour off the water again, and add a pint of cold water. Cook the pudding in a double-boiler for half an hour ; then add a pint of the cold milk, and when the dish begins to boil — say in fifteen minutes — add the corn-starch, mixed with half a cupful of the remaining milk. After ten minutes' cooking add the rest of the milk, and the sugar, salt, and flavoring. The latter may be a teaspoonful of vanilla or lemon extract, or a light grating of nutmeg. Stir well, and after turning into a pudding-dish, bake for twenty minutes in a moderate oven. Serve cold. *Rice Balls with Soft Custard. After washing a cupful of rice in three waters, and soaking it for an hour in cold water, pour off the latter, and add two cupfuls and a half of milk to the rice. Put on to cook in the double-boiler. At the end of an hour add a teaspoonful of salt ; cook half an hour longer. Dip small custard cups into cold water, and then fill them with cooked rice, and set where it will get wholly cold. At serving-time turn the mounds of rice out upon a flat dish ; and after putting a bit of bright jelly on each one, pour soft custard around all. To Make the Custard. — Put a quart of milk over the fire in a double-boiler. Mix two table-spoonfuls of cornstarch with five of cold milk, and when the milk in the boiler begins to boil, stir this mixture into it, and cook ten minutes. Meanwhile beat together four eggs and half a cupful of sugar, and after pouring the boiling mixture over this, cook the custard in the boiler for five minutes, stirring all the while. Remove from the fire, and add a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt and a large teaspoonful of vanilla or lemon extract. This is a cheap and good custard, but not, of course, so good as if made chiefly of eggs. The rice may be served hot, and the custard cold. * Flummery. This is a pudding made of a quart of milk, three tablespoonfuls of corn-starch, half a teaspoonful of salt, one generous teaspoonful of vanilla extract, the whites of four eggs, and four table-spoonfuls of sugar. Reserve half a cupful of the milk, and put the remainder on the stove in a double-boiler. Mix the cornstarch with the half-cupful of cold milk, and stir the mixture into the boiling milk. Add the salt, and beat thoroughly ; then cover, and cook for twelve minutes, stirring twice in that time. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and add the sugar to them ; and when the pudding has cooked for twelve minutes, add the whites to it. Add also the vanilla extract, and beat all the ingredients together. Rinse a mould with cold water, and, pouring the mixture into it, set it in a cool place. Serve with soft custard made of the yolks of the eggs, a pint of milk, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, one-tenth of a teaspoonful of salt, and half a teaspoonful of vanilla extract ; or, in case the Whites of eggs left from some other dish in which the yolks were used be taken for this pudding, serve sugar and cream instead of soft custard. * Cream Pudding.