Home › The Principles of Cookery › Bread and Butter Pudding
Bread and Butter Pudding
Cut some thin slices off a square loaf and butter them on one side. Place a layer of them at the bottom of a pie-dish; scatter over them some currants and raisins that have previously been soaked in boiling water; put another layer of bread and butter and more currants and raisins, and so on until the dish is three parts filled. Do not press the bread down. Fill up the dish with hot custard, pouring it in a little at a time so that the bread may absorb it. Set it to cook in a moderately hot oven, and remove it as soon as done.
The method is sound but the quantities are entirely assumed, as was normal in Victorian instructional writing. The two things worth fixing are the custard ratio and the oven temperature.
- The custard is the whole dishNo quantities are given here, as is usual in this style of instructional writing. A workable ratio is 3 eggs to 1 pint (500 ml) of milk with 2 oz sugar; more eggs sets firmer, more milk gives a softer, looser pudding.
- "Moderately hot oven"Somewhere in the region of 350-375F/175-190C, and the lower end is safer for a custard. Anything hotter and the egg proteins tighten and weep, leaving watery custard under a browned lid of bread.
- A water bath is worth the troubleStand the pie-dish in a roasting tin of hot water reaching halfway up. It buffers the custard against direct oven heat.
- Pouring the custard in stagesThis is the instruction that matters. Adding it a little at a time, with a rest between, lets the crumb drink it up instead of floating; twenty minutes of soaking before baking improves the texture further.
- Do not press the bread downThe looseness is deliberate. Compressed layers bake to a dense, sodden slab rather than a set custard holding separate slices.
- Soaking the dried fruitBoiling water plumps the currants and raisins so they do not draw moisture out of the custard and scorch on the surface. Push any exposed fruit under the top layer before baking or it will burn.
- "A square loaf"A plain white tin loaf; slightly stale bread works better than fresh. Modern soft sandwich bread collapses; day-old bread, brioche or challah all hold their shape better.
- Knowing when it is doneRoughly 40-50 minutes for a 1.5-pint dish. The centre should wobble as a single mass when nudged, not ripple; carryover heat finishes it, and an overcooked custard curdles.
- YieldA 1.5-pint (900 ml) pie-dish serves four to six. Serve warm rather than hot, when the custard has firmed enough to cut.
Bread and butter pudding belongs to the long English tradition of turning stale bread into something worth eating, a habit shared with poor knights, brown betty and summer pudding. Baked bread-and-custard puddings appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onwards, and the dish features in Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, which appeared in the late Victorian period. The insistence on not pressing the bread down, and on adding the custard gradually, marks it as writing for a household cook.