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Bread Pudding with Onions
Mix half a pound of bread-crumbs with a tea-spoonful of sage, two ounces of onions, and pepper and salt, with three-quarters of a pint of milk. Add two eggs well beaten, and bake in a quick oven.
This is sage-and-onion stuffing set with egg and milk and baked on its own — a savoury pudding to serve alongside roast pork, goose or duck rather than a dessert. A few of the quantities need translating before it works.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The custard sets fairly quickly; expect something in the region of 30-40 minutes, until the centre is firm and the top browned.
- Three-quarters of a pintCassell's pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz, or a scant 2 US cups. Using a US pint measure leaves the pudding too dry.
- Half a pound of bread-crumbsWeigh rather than measure by volume: crumb size and dryness change the cup count enormously, and this pudding lives or dies on the crumb-to-liquid ratio.
- Soften the onions firstTwo ounces is one small onion, finely chopped. Raw onion will not cook through in the time the custard takes to set; sweat it in butter until translucent before mixing, or the pudding tastes sharp and the pieces stay crunchy.
- SageProbably dried rubbed sage. If using fresh, chop about a tablespoon of leaves; dried sage is what gives the familiar stuffing flavour.
- Let it soakPour the seasoned milk over the crumbs and stand 15 minutes before adding the beaten eggs. Crumbs that go into the oven still dry will drink the custard unevenly and the pudding bakes patchy.
- SeasoningThe original leaves pepper and salt open. About a teaspoon of salt and a good half-teaspoon of pepper suits this quantity; there is no stock or fat here, so under-salting leaves it bland.
- Yield and servingEnough for four to six as a side dish, baked in a buttered 8-inch dish. Serve hot, cut in squares, with roast meat and gravy.
Sage and onion bound with breadcrumbs is the standard English stuffing for pork and for fatty birds, and baking it separately in a dish — rather than inside the bird — is often said to have been common in Victorian kitchens, with better browning and the stretching of a small joint given as the usual reasons. The style is close to what northern English cooks would recognise as a stuffing ball or, with the addition of pork fat, a Lincolnshire-style haslet mixture. The pairing of sage with pork is old enough that its origins are undocumented, though sage's traditional reputation as an aid to digesting rich meat is often given as the reason.