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Bread Pudding
1½ Cupfuls Crumbed Bread (at least 24 hours old) 11/2 Tablespoonfuls Snowdrift ¾ Cupful Sugar 1/3 Teaspoonful Salt 3 Cupfuls Milk 2 Egg Yolks or 1 Egg 11/2 Teaspoonfuls Vanilla Grating Nutmeg Scald the milk and add the crumbs and Snowdrift. Let stand at least ten minutes, then stir in the flavoring, salt, and the egg, beaten and mixed with the sugar.
Transfer to a baking-dish, which has been rubbed with Snowdrift, and bake in a moderate oven, 350 degrees F., for about forty minutes, taking care that the pudding mixture does not boil. Serve hot or cold with rich milk, cream, Lemon, Nut-- meg, Fudge, or Caramel Sauce. 3 Cupfuls Soft Bread Crumbs
A plain custard-bound bread pudding from a shortening manufacturer's promotional book. The method is sound and needs little translation, but a few of the quantities and one instruction deserve comment.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil vegetable shortening sold in the United States from the early 1900s, the whole reason this booklet exists. Any solid vegetable shortening works; butter gives a better flavour in a dessert like this, at the same measure.
- The custard is the hinge"Taking care that the pudding mixture does not boil" is the only line that matters. Egg and milk set at around 175F; past that they curdle and weep. A water bath is the reliable insurance the recipe does not mention, and the pudding is done when a knife an inch from the centre comes out clean.
- OvenThe book gives 350F outright, so no conversion is needed. Forty minutes suits a shallow dish; a deep one may want an hour.
- BreadAt least 24 hours old is not fussiness -- stale crumb absorbs the scalded milk instead of dissolving into paste. A plain white loaf, crusts on or off as you like.
- Quantity of crumbsThe ingredient list and the trailing line disagree on how much bread to use. Three cups of milk will carry anywhere from 1½ to 3 cups of crumbs; the smaller amount gives a loose custard with bread in it, the larger a firm sliceable pudding. Judge by which you want.
- EggsTwo yolks or one whole egg is a thin ratio for three cups of milk. Three whole eggs gives a custard that sets dependably without altering the character of the dish.
- YieldServes four to six, in a dish of about 1½ quarts.
Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening marketed in the United States from the early twentieth century, and its recipe booklets were given away to persuade cooks that a manufactured fat could replace butter and lard in everything from pie crust to pudding. That commercial purpose explains why shortening appears twice in a bread pudding -- once in the custard and once to grease the dish -- where an older receipt would simply have said butter. The pudding itself is far older than the fat: baked bread-and-milk custards run through English domestic cookery for centuries as the standard way to use a stale loaf, and the list of sauces offered here, from plain cream to fudge and caramel, marks the point where a thrift dish had settled comfortably into the dessert course.