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Brown Bread Pudding
Take equal quantities of well-washed currants, brown bread crumbs, and shred suet--1/2 pound of each--add 6 ounces of sugar, 1/2 glass of brandy, and the same quantity of cream; mix all together, with 6 eggs well beaten, leaving out the whites of 2. Bake in a moderate oven for two hours. Serve with sweet sauce and sugar over the top.
A dense Victorian steamed-pudding mixture that happens to be baked rather than boiled. It is essentially a lighter cousin of Christmas pudding, and it behaves like one in the oven.
- Moderate oven350F. Two hours at that temperature in a deep dish is right for the density of this batter; a shallow pan will dry out well before then. Butter a 2-quart baking dish generously.
- Water bathNothing in the text calls for one, but a pudding this rich sets more evenly standing in a roasting pan of hot water. Without it, cover the dish with foil for the first 90 minutes to keep the top from hardening before the centre sets.
- SuetBeef suet is the raw kidney fat, sold shredded and floured in some countries and available from a butcher elsewhere. Packaged vegetable suet works. Frozen and grated butter is a workable substitute in the same weight, though the crumb will be softer.
- Brown bread crumbsA close-grained wholemeal loaf, slightly stale, grated or pulsed to crumbs. Modern sliced brown bread is softer and wetter than the Victorian loaf; dry the crumbs in a low oven for ten minutes if the mixture looks slack.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Half a pound is roughly 1 1/2 cups. Wash and dry them, as the recipe says, since older stock carried grit.
- A glass of brandyAn imprecise Victorian measure, generally taken as a wineglass, about 2 fluid ounces. Half a glass is therefore around 2 tablespoons, and the same again of cream.
- The eggsSix eggs with two whites removed gives six yolks and four whites, which is what makes the pudding rich rather than airy. Beat them well before folding in, as the mixture is heavy and will not take up air later.
- Yield and sauceEight to ten servings; it is very rich. The sweet sauce intended here is a hard sauce or a brandy-and-butter sauce, or a thin custard if you want something lighter.
Bread pudding of this kind belongs to a long English tradition of turning stale loaf into something festive, and brown-bread versions appear in English household manuals through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Suet, currants and a spoonful of spirits are the recurring vocabulary of the genre, and grated brown bread in place of flour gives a noticeably nuttier, coarser crumb. The measurements arrive in the mixed idiom of pounds, ounces and glasses rather than a single system, as was usual in printed collections of the period.