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Bread Pudding (Cups stale bread crumbs quart)
2 cups stale bread crumbs 1 quart scalded milk 1/3 cup sugar 1/4 cup melted butter 2 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla or 1/4 teaspoon spice Soak bread crumbs in milk, set aside until cool; add sugar, butter, eggs slightly beaten, salt, and flavoring; bake one hour in buttered pudding-dish in slow oven; serve with Vanilla Sauce. In preparing bread crumbs for puddings avoid using outside crusts. With a coarse grater there need be but little waste.
Bread and Butter Pudding 1 small baker's stale loaf Butter 3 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 quart milk Remove end crusts from bread, cut loaf in one-half inch slices, spread each slice generously with butter; arrange in buttered pudding-dish, buttered side down. Beat eggs slightly, add sugar, salt, and milk; strain, and pour over bread; let stand thirty minutes. Bake one hour in slow oven, covering the first half-hour of baking. The top of pudding should be well browned. Serve with Hard or Creamy Sauce. Three-fourths cup raisins, parboiled in boiling water to cover and seeded, may be sprinkled between layers of bread.
A plain baked custard poured over crumbs, and its sliced-bread cousin. Both live or die by oven temperature: the egg mixture needs to set gently, not boil.
- "Slow oven"Read this as 300-325F. Hotter and the custard curdles, weeps and puffs, then collapses; the surface should just tremble when the dish is nudged. A skewer or knife inserted off-centre comes out clean at around 170-175F internal.
- Scalded milkMilk brought just to the point where steam rises and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge, about 180F, not a rolling boil. It softens the crumbs faster, and the recipe is right to insist the mixture cool before the eggs go in, or they will scramble.
- Crumbs, not cubesGrated stale bread on a coarse grater gives a fine, even crumb that dissolves into the custard. Torn cubes make a looser, more bread-forward pudding; both work, but the texture is quite different from what the author intended.
- Avoiding crustsThe instruction matters more with the dark, thick crusts of a hearth or commercial loaf than with a modern sandwich loaf. Bottom and side crusts of a soft loaf can go in; heavy end crusts still turn leathery.
- Spice quantityA quarter teaspoon of "spice" means ground cinnamon, nutmeg or mixed spice. That is a light hand by current taste; half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg gives a more pronounced flavour.
- The bread and butter versionA "small baker's stale loaf" is roughly a 1 lb loaf, about 12-14 half-inch slices. Covering for the first half hour steams the bread through; uncovering lets the top brown, and that browned top is the point of the dish.
- Butter side downThe likely reasoning is that melted butter rises through the dish rather than running off the exposed surface, so the top browns rather than drying out; the recipe itself gives no reason.
- RaisinsParboiling plumps them so they do not draw moisture from the custard; seeding is unnecessary with modern seedless raisins. Keep them below the surface or they scorch.
- YieldA quart of milk and 2-3 eggs fills a 2-quart dish and serves six to eight. Both puddings are best warm rather than hot from the oven.