🧪 Bad Science 1907

Iced Rice Pudding

Raw yolks and whites frozen into a pudding, kept and eaten over several days.

From: Good Things to Eat and How to Prepare Them
Published: 1907
Yikes Scale: Yikes

Exactly as printed, 1907

Cook one-half cup of rice in a quart of boiling salted water; when soft, drain, and pour over it one quart of milk; add to this one cup of sugar beaten with the yolks of two eggs. Beat the whites separately and add the yolks before stirring into the milk. Do not cook the eggs. Cool and flavor with one-half teaspoon of Larkin Orange Flavoring Extract and one-half teaspoon of Larkin Nutmeg. When chilled freeze the same as any ice-cream.

Good Things to Eat and How to Prepare Them, 1907. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

The eggs never meet heat. The rice is boiled in water and drained, and the milk goes onto rice that is warm at best — nowhere near a custard temperature.

Freezing does not kill what is in a raw-egg base; it holds it. And a frozen pudding is kept and eaten over days, which stretches the exposure rather than ending it.

Notes from the 21st century

Make it a custard first. Take the milk, sugar and yolks to about 175°F before it meets the rice. That is one extra pan and it fixes everything.
1907 milk was often raw as well. So the base carries two separate risks, of which the egg is only the more obvious.
Iced puddings were a status dish. They needed an ice house or bought ice. This is a recipe for a household with means.

Don't take our word for it. The complete book is online, free and searchable.

Read the original page →

More bad science

See all

Raw Marrow for the Bloodless

Marrow from “animals, freshly killed,” administered to bloodless patients “to stimulate their fresh blood formation.” The logic is that marrow makes blood, so eat marrow.

🧪 Bad Science Yikes

Meals Medicinal · 1905

Sulphuric-Acid Fumigation of Tainted Meat

Meat going off? Suspend it over a bowl of salt, add two ounces of sulphuric acid by degrees, and let the fumes work. “Care must be taken not to breathe them.”

🧪 Bad Science Call poison control

Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914

Test Pickles for Copper

Chop the pickle into ammonia and watch for deep blue — proof it was “cooked in brass or copper kettles.” A routine kitchen test, because it happened constantly.

🧪 Bad Science Big yikes

Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914