Grandma’s Recipes – Presidential Lemon Rice Pudding

I was thrilled when I came across this recipe in my grandmother’s recipe box! It is on a scrap of paper that she tore out of the newspaper as you can see in the picture. Somehow her saving it makes me think that she liked historical recipes too 🙂

Ulysses S. Grant was a Union General at the time of the American Civil War. He was one of the few good generals that the North had. He was the general who Robert E. Lee ended up surrendering to at the Appomattox courthouse in Virginia. He later went on to become the 18th president of the once again, United States. It is rumored that the general turned president, loved rice pudding and may have made this recipe for himself often during his military campaigns. Lemon was a popular and easy to obtain flavor of the time.

I can’t remember the last time I had rice pudding so this was a real treat to make! It reminded me very much of a souffle when it came out of the oven and the lemon sauce was suprisingly very good with the heavier sweetened rice. I have halved the recipe that I gave below from the original. This recipe can easily be doubled, but it will make quite a lot!