590 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
impaired. When it is boiled, Rice swells up, and absorbs 
nearly five times its weight of water, most of the mineral 
constituents being dissolved away. Two and a half ounces 
of Rice, cooked by boiling, (that is, about two-thirds of a 
soup plateful), require three and a half hours for their diges- 
tion. For the daily needs of an active, robust man, about 
five pounds of cooked rice would have to be consumed ; there- 
fore, when this grain is eaten in moderation it should be com- 
bined with proteid food, such as milk, eggs, light meats, or 
the better sorts of fish. Rice grains, as commercially supplied, 
consist almost exclusively of starch, and can therefore only 
augment the animal heat, and increase fatness, without minister- 
ing at all to the muscular sustenance, and the strength of body. 
But the inner husk of the grain, which lies immediately beneath 
the outermost horny capsule, contains albuminoids and 
phosphates in useful abundance; so that a brown bread made 
with four-fifths of rice flour, and one-fifth rice meal, is quite 
nutritious, and recruiting to the body in general, as well as to the 
nervous energies, the coarse outermost husk being first got rid of. 
When making a rice pudding, the rice should be first boiled 
rapidly in water, four ounces of rice to a quart of water, adding 
salt, if desired, when the rice begins to soften. The milk should 
not be put with the rice for cooking until twenty or thirty 
minutes before the pudding is served, else, if cooked longer than 
this, the cheesy parts of the milk will be hard to digest. An 
old Dutch recipe for preparing a Rice pudding runs thus: “ Take 
five teaspoonfuls of pounded rice, one quart of new milk, six 
eggs, eight ounces of sugar, two ounces of butter, and one tea- 
spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Boil the rice and milk together 
until thick and soft; let it cool; then stir in the butter, whisk 
the eggs, white and yolk separately, and mix with the rice and 
milk. Bake for three quarters of an hour in a buttered mould, 
dusted with fine biscuit powder. Turn out when cold.” Again, 
“Boil one cupful of rice in one quart and a half of new milk ; 
stir in as soon as soft one tablespoonful of butter. When cold, 
whisk up three eggs, adding some cinnamon, or Tangerine 
orange peel. Stir well together, and bake for twenty minutes 
in a buttered pie dish.” Eggs are chemically adapted admir- 
ably to supplement foods exclusively rich in starch, but poor 
in fat, such as rice, and similar cereals ; thus when used in rice 
puddings they make these a complete food. If taken raw 
