France and the Alps · Volume 11, Butter, Cider and the Buckwheat Line
Teurgoule
Normandy
Illustration
- Time
- 6 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 72 sources in the brief
A Norman baked rice pudding whose name is popularly explained as deriving from se tordre la goule, to twist one's mouth, a reference to the grimace of eating it too hot straight from the oven; neither that etymology nor the story of a naval officer bringing rice, cinnamon and vanilla home to Normandy in the late 18th century was traced to a documented source, and both are presented here as popular explanation rather than settled fact.
As tradition built it
6 hours at 120°C, a representative modern equivalent.
Ingredients
Method
- Combine the milk, rice, sugar, salt and cinnamon.
- Historically, set the dish in the dying embers of a wood-fired bread oven after the day's baking was done, for a long, gentle, falling heat rather than a fixed one.
- A representative modern equivalent bakes for 6 hours at 120°C, producing a creamy interior while the milk's own fat sets a crust on the surface with no added element at all.
What a modern chef changes
A Big Green Egg's falling heat, an infused milk, and a torched finish
Method
- Hold the Big Green Egg at a genuinely stable, low, indirect heat with a ceramic deflector for the full six hours, the closest a home cook can come to a dying bread oven's own falling heat curve rather than the more constant, drier heat of a domestic electric oven.
- Infuse the milk with a whole cinnamon stick and a split vanilla pod at a gentle simmer before it ever meets the rice, rather than adding ground cinnamon directly to the raw mixture, for a rounder, less dusty spice character.
- Finish the surface crust briefly under a very hot broiler or torch at the very end, once the pudding has already set, for a genuinely caramelised top rather than leaving it to the oven's own uneven finish alone.