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Save-All Pudding
Put any scraps of bread there may be into a bowl, and over a quarter of a pound of these pour a pint of boiling milk. Let the bread soak till soft, then beat it well with a fork till no lumps remain. Add, whilst beating, two eggs, two table-spoonfuls of finely-shredded suet, or a slice of sweet butter or dripping, two table-spoonfuls of picked currants, two table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar, and a quarter of a nutmeg, grated, or any other suitable flavouring. Two apples, pared, cored, and quartered, may be added to the pudding or not. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, and bake in a well-heated oven. When the pudding is set and nicely browned on the surface it is done enough. Time to bake, an hour or more. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A bread-and-butter pudding built from stale ends rather than fresh slices, and the proportions still work. The only real judgement call is the oven, which the original leaves as "well-heated".
- Oven temperatureThe original only says "well-heated" and gives no figure; a moderate oven of about 350-375F (180-190C) is a reasonable modern reading, and at that heat a pudding this size should set and brown in about an hour. A slower 325F oven gives a softer, more custardy set but will need longer.
- Quarter pound of breadAbout 4 oz, or roughly four thick slices of a plain white loaf, crusts included. Stale bread is better than fresh here — it drinks the milk without collapsing to paste.
- A pint of milkAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so use 2 1/2 US cups rather than 2. With only 4 oz of bread the mixture will look alarmingly wet before soaking; it thickens as it stands.
- Suet, butter or drippingShredded beef suet gives a firm, faintly savoury richness. Packet suet or grated frozen butter both work; dripping will push the pudding towards a supper dish rather than a sweet.
- Picked currants"Picked" means gone over for stalks and grit, which packaged dried currants no longer need. Currants are the small dried black grape, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants.
- Powdered sugarPeriod usage for sugar crushed fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Use granulated or caster sugar — two tablespoons, which makes a barely sweet pudding by current tastes.
- A quarter of a nutmegGrated, that is close to half a teaspoon, which is assertive. Start with a quarter teaspoon if nutmeg is not a flavour you reach for often.
- The applesQuartered pieces may not soften evenly in the baking time and can leave the pudding lumpy; slice them thinly or grate them if you want them included.
- Testing and yieldSet means a knife or skewer in the centre comes out clean of liquid custard; a slight wobble is fine. Serves five or six as written, best warm rather than hot.
The name is the whole point: a save-all is a thing that saves what would otherwise be wasted, and the word was used in the nineteenth century for candle-holders that burned the last stub of tallow as much as for kitchen economies. Bread was a substantial item in many working household budgets, and stale ends were not lightly thrown out. Many English cookery books of the period carry some version — bread pudding, poor man's pudding, bread-and-butter pudding — differing mainly in whether the bread is soaked to a mash, as here, or left in layers. The costing of 8d for five or six people is the argument the book is making: a sweet course for well under twopence a head, using milk, eggs and fat already in the house.