Soak 1 pint of bread in a quart of milk; add the yolks of 4 eggs, 1 cup of sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter, ½ cup of raisins, ½ cup of currants, the juice of ½ lemon. Mix well and bake until brown; then beat the whites to a stiff froth with 3 tablespoonfuls of pulverized sugar. Spread the pudding with jelly and cover with the beaten whites; set in the oven to brown.
A baked custard bread pudding finished like a queen of puddings, with jam and a meringue lid. The original gives no oven temperature and no times, so those are the two things worth pinning down.
- The hinge: keep the custard low and slowFour yolks in a quart of milk is a thin custard, and it curdles if pushed hard. Bake at 325-350F until the centre is just set and a knife comes out clean, roughly 50-70 minutes in a 2-quart dish. A pan of hot water around the dish is cheap insurance.
- "1 pint of bread"A volume measure of torn or cubed stale bread, not a weight: about 2 cups, which will weigh roughly 3-4 oz depending on how finely it is broken and how hard it is packed (crumbs pack heavier than cubes). Day-old white bread or a plain enriched loaf is right. Fresh bread turns to paste in this much milk.
- Quart of milk4 cups. Whole milk; skim gives a watery set. Let the bread soak 20-30 minutes so it swells before the eggs go in.
- "Bake until brown"Browning is not the doneness cue here, since the surface will colour before a quart of custard sets. Judge by the centre, then move to the meringue.
- Pulverized sugarPeriod name for what is now sold as powdered or confectioners' sugar. Modern versions carry cornstarch, which is harmless in meringue; superfine (caster) sugar dissolves just as well if you prefer.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisin, not fresh red or black currants. Plumping both fruits in warm water or a little of the lemon juice for ten minutes keeps them from scorching at the surface.
- The jelly layerSpread it while the pudding is still warm so it loosens and levels; a stiff cold jelly will tear the top. Any tart red jelly or seedless jam works, about half a cup.
- Browning the meringueBack into the oven at 350-400F for 8-12 minutes, until the peaks take colour. Longer at a lower heat gives a drier, more stable meringue; a short blast gives a softer one that weeps sooner.
- YieldServes 8 generously. Best eaten the day it is made, warm or at room temperature, since the meringue collapses in the refrigerator.
Puddings built from stale bread, milk and eggs belong to every European kitchen that baked its own loaves and refused to waste them; what marks this one as a "Polish" version in the eyes of an American compiler is the fruit and lemon in the custard and the meringue cap rather than a sauce. The same construction appears in English books as queen of puddings and in Central European ones under various local names, usually with jam between the custard and the whipped whites. Its place in a book of a dish a day from a different nation seems to say more about an appetite for cosmopolitan novelty than about Polish home cooking, since a nationality could be attached to a familiar dish on the strength of one detail. The economy is real enough, though, and predates the label by centuries — four yolks stretched across a quart of milk, and the whites put to work on top so nothing is thrown away.