Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is rice cooked in milk with sugar, and it exists almost everywhere rice is grown. The source names no country and it would be wrong to give it one: recipes differ enormously not only between countries but within them, and the dish belongs to no single tradition. Africa has its own versions, which this is not. Roz bi laban is the Egyptian and Levantine rice pudding, set with cornflour and scented with rose or orange blossom water. Muhallabia is its relative. Thiakry in Senegal and the Gambia is millet couscous with fermented milk rather than rice. Each is a distinct dish with its own name and this generic version is none of them. What is here is a stovetop pudding built on cooked rice, milk, sugar, egg and raisins, thickened by tempering egg into the hot mixture, and finished with butter, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Tempering is the technique that matters: a cup of the hot rice is stirred into the beaten egg before the egg goes back into the pan, which raises its temperature gradually and stops it scrambling. It sits in Worldwide Recipes under Global, with its URL unchanged.