1 quart of new milk, or as fresh as you can get it.

1 cup raw rice.

4 eggs.

1 great spoonful of butter.

1 cup sugar, and same of fine bread-crumbs.

1/2 cup suet (powdered).

1/2 lb. raisins, seeded and chopped.

1/2 lb. currants, washed well and dried.

1/4 lb. citron, minced fine.

Soak the rice over night, or for five hours, in a little warm water. Boil until tender in one pint of the milk. Simmer gently, and do not stir it. Set the saucepan in hot water, and cook in that way to avoid burning, shaking up the rice now and then. When done, beat in the butter. Butter a mould well, and cover the bottom with the bread-crumbs. Cover this with rice; wet with a raw custard made of the other pint of milk, the yolks of the eggs and the sugar. On this sprinkle suet; then a layer of the mixed fruit. More bread-crumbs, rice, custard, suet and fruit, until the dish is nearly full. The top layer should be crumbs. Bake for an hour in a moderate oven. When nearly done, draw to the door of the oven and cover with a meringue made of the whites of the eggs whisked stiff with a very little powdered sugar.

Eat warm, with sweetened cream as sauce. But it is also very good cold, eaten with cream.

This, in my opinion, deserves the highest rank among rice puddings, which are, by the way, far more respectable as desserts than is usually believed. There are so many indifferent, and worse than indifferent ones made and eaten, that discredit has fallen upon the whole class. If properly made and cooked, they are not only wholesome, but palatable dainties.