Rice cooked long and gently in sweetened milk, perfumed with nutmeg, until a golden skin forms in the oven. Creamy, warm, and soothing: the food of comfort and convalescence.

Why this dish? Virginia Woolf was preoccupied with her health throughout her life and subjected to rest cures where mild, milky, 'restorative' foods were prescribed. Rice pudding, the quintessential nursery and sickroom food, embodies this dietetics of care and comfort that marked her existence so deeply.

When the body falters and the doctors order rest — that rest which has weighed so heavily upon me — they bring you rice pudding, warm, in a white bowl. It is a child's food, I know, and perhaps that is why it consoles. One lets it cook for hours in the oven, very slowly, until a golden skin forms on top, which some adore and others push aside with the tip of the spoon. A grating of nutmeg, and nothing else: in the simplicity of this dish there is, I believe, a kind of peace.

How it was made : Baked rice pudding traditionally cooked in the cooling oven after Sunday's roast, using residual heat for hours — hence its melting texture and caramelized skin. Economical and digestible, it was both the family Sunday dessert and the preferred food for the sick and young children.

The contemporary twist : Serve it cold, in individual pots, topped with a spoonful of bitter orange marmalade — the sweet/bitter contrast pays homage to the two signature flavors of the English table.

Sources : Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management · Florence White, Good Things in England (1932)

Virginia Woolf · Charactorium