The Comforts of Home In a Global Dessert

What is the matter with Mary Jane?

She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain,

And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again!

What is the matter with Mary Jane?

-- A.A. Milne

I married into rice pudding. It was not part of my childhood experience other than through nursery rhymes and occasional cafeteria sightings.

When my husband and I were first married and a little short on food, his uncle, a butcher, supplied us with months' worth of frozen meats. My new grandmother-in-law sent us home with cooked foods to fill the rest of the freezer: stuffed cabbage, split pea soup, her special salad dressing and what I came to think of as rice pudding.

Most rice puddings, I learned later, are soft and creamy. Bubbe Anna's -- scented with lemon peel and loaded with raisins -- was solid enough to slice with a knife. It was delicious at room temperature covered in warm milk. I also liked it chunked off the block right from the freezer.

Bubbe Anna, all 4 feet 10 inches of her, was an excellent Eastern European Jewish cook. She did not, however, share. She'd leave one or two key ingredients out of every recipe, so none of her marvelous culinary creations has ever been replicated. My sisters-in-law and I have been trying for years.

So after Bubbe Anna's death 25 years ago, I moved on. I put rice pudding behind me.

Then just after New Year's I was on a radio talk show in Baltimore, and a caller had a question about rice pudding. The phone board lit up. We could have stayed on the air all day.

I started asking around. Almost everyone had something to say about rice pudding, not all of it good. For some people, the mere mention makes their eyes narrow and nostrils flare. They find it "too sweet," "creepy" in texture or, cruelest of all, "bland." On the other side of the table are the true believers. They regard rice pudding as the Platonic ideal of comfort food. They ate it as children, they make it as adults. They feel sorry for those who think of it as nursery fare.