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Bread and Butter Pudding
Cut half a loaf of good white bread into thin slices, spread with butter as for eating, lay them into a pudding-dish and stew; between each two layers of bread, put a few seeded and chopped raisins. Beat six eggs with as many tablespoonfuls of sugar; mix them with three pints of sweet milk and a grated nutmeg. Turn the whole over the bread. Let it stand till fully half of the milk is absorbed by the bread; then bake three fourths of an hour. Serve with a rich sauce.
A large, old-fashioned baked custard that uses far more milk than modern versions. The proportions work, but the dish is bigger than most people expect and the oven needs to stay gentle.
- "Lay them into a pudding-dish and stew"Almost certainly a slip for strew: the raisins are strewn between the layers, as the rest of the sentence suggests. Nothing here is stewed.
- Scale and vesselThree pints is six cups of milk, plus half a loaf of bread. This needs a 4-quart baking dish or a 9x13 pan, and serves eight to ten. Halve everything for a household of four.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual for household recipes of this date. Bake at 325-350F; a large custard is liable to curdle and weep if pushed hotter. Three quarters of an hour suits a wide, shallow dish — a deep one may want an hour or more.
- The hinge: the soak"Let it stand till fully half of the milk is absorbed" is the instruction that decides the pudding. Give it 30-45 minutes at minimum. Bread that goes into the oven dry stays dry and floats on a layer of loose custard.
- DonenessJudge by the custard, not the clock: the centre should be just set with a slight wobble, around 170-175F on a thermometer. Carryover heat finishes it as it stands.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh unsoured milk, as distinct from the buttermilk and sour milk that appear elsewhere in books of this period. Whole milk; the recipe relies on the buttered bread for richness.
- BreadA plain white sandwich loaf, sliced thin and buttered on one side as for eating. Slightly stale bread absorbs better than fresh. Crusts may stay on — they give the top its chew.
- NutmegA whole grated nutmeg in six cups of milk is assertive by current taste. Half a nutmeg, freshly grated, suits most palates.
- "A rich sauce"Likely candidates are a hard sauce (butter creamed with sugar and a spoonful of brandy or vanilla) or a thin custard sauce poured warm over each serving.
Bread and butter pudding is the thrifty end of English cookery: buttered bread, eggs and milk assembled from what the kitchen already had, with raisins for interest. Versions appear in English printed cookbooks from the eighteenth century onward, and by the later nineteenth century, when American household compilations of this kind were being issued, it was standard fare rather than anything worth explaining. The instruction to butter the slices "as for eating" points to a cook expected to work from familiar reference points rather than from a described technique.