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Chocolate Bread Pudding
2 cups stale bread crumbs 4 cups scalded milk 2 squares unsweetened chocolate 2/3 cup sugar 2 eggs 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla Soak bread in milk thirty minutes; melt chocolate in saucepan placed over hot water, add one-half sugar and enough milk taken from bread and milk to make of consistency to pour; add to mixture with remaining sugar, salt, vanilla, and eggs slightly beaten; turn into buttered pudding-dish and bake one hour in a moderate oven. Serve with Hard or Cream Sauce I.
A plain baked custard stretched with bread, thickened only by two eggs across a quart of milk. The chief thing to watch is the bake: this is a custard, and it wants gentle, even heat rather than a hot oven.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; "moderate" is conventionally read as about 350F, and for a custard the lower end (325-350F) is the safer choice. If the top browns before the centre sets, lay a sheet of foil loosely over the dish.
- Squares of chocolateA square of unsweetened baking chocolate was reckoned at 1 ounce, so this calls for about 2 ounces total. Unsweetened chocolate is still sold in scored bars, but the portions are not always 1 ounce, so weigh rather than count; do not substitute semisweet without cutting the sugar.
- Bread crumbsThese are soft crumbs torn or rubbed from stale open-crumbed white bread, not dry packaged crumbs. Two cups of soft crumbs is roughly 3 to 4 ounces; dried crumbs would absorb far more milk and give a heavy, pasty pudding.
- Melting the chocolateThe saucepan over hot water is a double boiler. Chocolate seizes if water or steam gets into it, so keep the bowl clear of the water and add the borrowed milk only once the chocolate is smooth and off direct heat.
- Tempering the eggsThe beaten eggs go into a mixture that has been standing with scalded milk and may still be warm. Stir a ladleful of the warm mixture into the eggs first, then return everything to the dish, or the eggs can set in threads.
- Dish and water bathUse a buttered 2-quart baking dish. The recipe does not call for one, but standing the dish in a pan of hot water gives a smoother custard and guards against the edges curdling while the centre is still loose.
- Judging donenessAn hour is a starting point, not a guarantee; a deep dish may need 15 minutes more. It is done when a knife slipped in an inch from the centre comes out clean and the middle jiggles as a set mass rather than sloshing, around 175F internal.
- Yield and servingServes 6 to 8. Hard sauce is creamed butter and powdered sugar flavoured with vanilla or spirits, served cold so it melts into the hot pudding. Cream Sauce I is a separate recipe in the book and its composition is not given here.