Home › Puddings and Sauces › Simple Fruit Puddings
Simple Fruit Puddings
Stew currants, or any small fruits, fresh or dried, with sugar to taste, and pour hot over thin slices of baker's bread with crust cut off, making alternate layers of fruit and bread, and leaving a thick layer of fruit for the last. Put a plate on top, and when cool set on ice; serve with sifted sugar, or cream and sugar. This pudding is delicious made with Boston or milk crackers, split open, and stewed apricots or peaches, with plenty of juice, arranged as above. Or another way is to toast and butter slices of bread, pour over it hot stewed fruit in alternate layers, and serve warm with rich hot sauce. - Mrs. L. S. W.
This is a summer pudding in all but name, and the whole thing depends on having more fruit juice than the bread can politely absorb.
- Err on the side of too much juiceBread that is only damp gives a dry, crumbly pudding. Stew the fruit until it is slack and syrupy, and pour it over boiling hot so each layer soaks through to the middle before it cools.
- Baker's bread means a plain white loafBaker's bread means bread bought from a baker rather than baked at home, in practice a plain white loaf -- A close-crumbed, slightly stale white sandwich loaf is what is wanted, cut thin. Modern airy supermarket bread collapses into paste; a day-old firm loaf or a plain pain de mie holds its layers.
- Boston and milk crackersBoth were large, hard commercial crackers of the common-cracker type, split before use; milk crackers were made with milk rather than being plain hardtack. Common crackers (still sold in New England) are the closest survivor; failing that, plain water biscuits will do, though they soften faster.
- Set on iceRefrigerate; several hours, and overnight for preference. The pudding needs the cold time to firm up enough to cut.
- The plate on top is a pressPut a weight on the plate — a couple of tins, a filled jar — so the layers compress into a single sliceable mass. Line the bowl with plastic wrap first if you intend to turn it out.
- Sugar to taste, roughlyThe recipe gives no quantities. For tart currants or sour cherries, figure a scant half cup of sugar per pound of fruit; ripe apricots or peaches need far less. Taste the stewed fruit before it goes over the bread, though the sifted sugar or cream at table allows some correction.
- Dried fruit needs soakingDried currants, apricots or apples should be covered with water and left an hour or more before stewing, or they will drink the juice the bread is counting on.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a quart bowl, layered as described, will serve about six. The toasted-and-buttered warm version is best made in individual dishes and eaten at once.
Bread-and-fruit puddings of this kind were a common use for a stale loaf in households with fruit to hand, and the cold pressed version is essentially the dish the English call summer pudding, which is said to have circulated under names such as hydropathic pudding -- the usual explanation being that it was served at water-cure establishments where pastry was forbidden, though this account is traditional rather than documented. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, published in Minneapolis in 1877 and expanded through the 1880s (it grew out of an earlier Ohio edition), was assembled from contributions by subscribers, and this entry's three-in-one structure is typical of it: one technique, then two variations, credited to a single subscriber's initials. Boston and milk crackers were commercial products associated with New England bakeries and were sold by the barrel.