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Bread Custard Pudding
Make a custard according to the size of pudding required. A pint of custard will fill a medium-sized dish. Cut thin slices of bread and butter, to suit the dish, and over each layer throw currants, sugar, and finely-cut candied lemon, and a little nutmeg. Pour the custard over by degrees so that the bread may be well saturated, and let it stand an hour before putting it into the oven. Just before it is put in, throw over the last of the custard, and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour. Probable cost, about 1s. Sufficient for five or six people.
A baked bread-and-butter pudding in all but name, written for cooks who already knew what "a custard" meant. The gaps are worth filling in before you start.
- The custardThe recipe assumes a reader who knew the standard custard of the period: roughly 3 to 4 eggs beaten into a pint (2 cups) of milk with 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar, flavoured with lemon rind or a similar aromatic. The text does not say whether the custard is cooked before it goes on; the long soak and the half-hour bake fit an uncooked mixture poured over the bread.
- Moderate ovenRead as 325-350F. Anything hotter curdles the egg and leaves the pudding weeping liquid rather than set.
- The hour's soak is the hingeDo not shorten it. Dry bread that has not drunk the custard floats up and bakes to a crust while the base stays loose. Adding the last of the custard just before baking, as directed, keeps the top layer moist.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh blackcurrants. Raisins work; plump them in hot water for ten minutes if they are hard.
- Candied lemonCandied lemon peel, sold in strips or chopped in tubs. Modern mixed peel is not the same thing and carries less lemon flavour, so you may want a little more of it.
- BreadA close-crumbed white loaf, sliced thin and buttered on one side. Day-old bread absorbs better than fresh. Brioche or challah gives a richer result than the recipe intends.
- Testing and timingHalf an hour suits a shallow medium dish. Judge by the custard, not the clock: it should be just set with a slight wobble at the centre, around 170-175F internally. A deeper dish may need 40-50 minutes, and a roasting tin of hot water around it gives more even setting.
- Cost and yield"About 1s." is one shilling, twelve old pence, a modest sum for a dish of this size in a Victorian household. Five or six servings from a pint of custard is plausible if it follows a main course.
Bread puddings of this kind were a common answer to the stale end of a loaf in British kitchens long before Cassell's set them down, and the pattern here, buttered slices layered with dried fruit and spice and flooded with sweet custard, was well established by the mid-nineteenth century. The candied lemon and grated nutmeg are characteristic of the period: both were pantry staples in a way they are not now, and nutmeg was among the standard sweet spices of English baking. The instruction to make custard "according to the size of pudding required," with only a pint given as a benchmark, assumes a cook who could judge a dish by eye.