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Chocolate Bread Pudding
3/4 cup breadcrumbs, 2 cups scalded milk, 3 squares melted chocolate, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon Crisco, salt to taste, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 cup cold milk, 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup Sultana raisins. Mix all ingredients in order given. Pour into a Criscoed baking dish, set into pan of hot water, and bake 1 hour in moderate oven; stir twice during baking to keep chocolate from rising to the top.
A baked custard stiffened with bread rather than a true bread pudding, and it behaves like a custard: gentle heat, a water bath, and no rushing.
- Squares of chocolateA square meant a 1-ounce block of unsweetened baking chocolate, so this calls for 3 oz total. Using sweetened chocolate against the 3/4 cup sugar will make it cloying.
- CriscoThe book was published as promotion for the shortening, hence the branding and the instruction to "Crisco" the dish. A tablespoon of butter does the same job and tastes better; butter the dish as well.
- Moderate ovenAround 350°F; period usage covers roughly 350 to 375°F. Higher and the egg curdles at the edges before the centre sets, water bath or not.
- BreadcrumbsThe recipe does not specify, but soft crumbs from day-old bread suit this much milk better than dry packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid. Measure them loosely.
- Order of mixing"In order given" means the crumbs meet the scalded milk first and soften while the chocolate melts in. Beat the eggs separately and add a little of the warm chocolate milk to them before combining, or you will get threads of cooked egg.
- Sultana raisinsGolden raisins. Any raisin works; plumping them in hot water for ten minutes keeps them from drawing moisture out of the custard.
- Stirring twiceThis is the instruction that matters. The recipe's stated reason is to keep the chocolate from rising to the top; the raisins drift as well. No timing is given, so stir during the earlier part of the hour and stop once the edges have begun to set.
- Doneness and yieldAn hour is about right; the mixture comes to roughly 4 to 5 cups, so use a dish of at least 1 1/2 quarts. It is done when a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean and the centre still trembles, around 170°F. Serves four to six, warm or cold, with cream.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre of cookbook that was really advertising: Procter & Gamble published successive editions to teach American cooks what to do with Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening introduced in 1911, which is why the fat is named as a brand and even used as a verb here. The pudding itself is older than the book, a way of turning stale bread and a little chocolate into a dish that reads as a dessert rather than as thrift. Sultanas, the seedless pale grapes then imported largely from the eastern Mediterranean, were widely available by 1900.