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Monmouth Pudding
Take the crumb of a stale white loaf, put it into a basin, and pour over it boiling milk, in the proportion of a pint of milk to four ounces of bread. Cover until it is well soaked, then add two heaped table-spoonfuls of pounded white sugar, from four to five ounces of butter dissolved before the fire, the grated peel of a dry lemon with the juice of a fresh one, and three well-whisked eggs. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, the bottom of which has been spread with jam--strawberry, raspberry, or plum. Bake for twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A bread-and-butter custard baked over a layer of jam, with no oven temperature and no dish size given. Both are easy enough to supply.
- Oven temperatureCassell's assumes the cook knows her range. Treat this as a moderate oven, 350F/180C. Twenty minutes will set a shallow dish; a deeper one needs 30-35 minutes, until the centre is just firm and no longer liquid when the dish is tilted.
- The breadFour ounces of crumb to a pint of milk is roughly 115 g of soft white bread interior, crusts discarded, to 570 ml. Use a plain, close-textured white loaf a day or two old. Modern sliced bread with a soft, airy crumb collapses to paste; sourdough or seeded bread will fight the lemon.
- A pintThis is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz / 570 ml, not the American 16 oz. Using a US pint gives a stiffer, breadier pudding.
- The butterFour to five ounces (115-140 g) is a great deal by current taste and makes the pudding notably rich. Three ounces gives a lighter set without spoiling the texture. "Dissolved before the fire" simply means melted gently, not browned.
- Dry lemon peel'a dry lemon' most likely means a shrivelled one past its juicing prime, kept for its zest, which is why the recipe pairs it with the juice of a fresh one. Use the finely grated zest of one lemon plus the juice of a second. The recipe adds both together, before the eggs; if you prefer, stir the juice in briskly at the end, since acid can curdle warm milk.
- EggsEggs of the period were on the whole smaller than a modern large egg, so three medium eggs are probably the closer match; three large will set the pudding firmer and drier.
- The jam layerSpread the jam on a cold, well-buttered dish and pour the bread mixture over gently, or the jam lifts and streaks through. A stiff preserve holds better than a loose modern conserve.
- Dish and yieldA 1.2-litre (2-pint) pie dish suits the quantity and gives the right depth. It serves five or six as the book says, but they are generous portions by present standards. Best warm rather than hot, when the custard has firmed.
Monmouth pudding is one of a family of thrifty English and Welsh bread puddings that turn stale loaf, milk and a spoonful of preserve into a dish for a family table, and it is generally associated with Monmouthshire, on the border between the two countries. The better-known version is built in distinct layers -- soaked bread, jam, then a whisked meringue of the whites. Cassell's, characteristically, gives the simpler one-bowl form: whole eggs beaten in, jam at the bottom of the dish, no meringue and no fuss. The inclusion of a probable cost, 1s 4d, and a stated yield is a hallmark of the New Dictionary of Cookery, aimed squarely at households that budgeted meals in shillings and needed to know before they began whether a pudding was worth the milk it took.