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Peach Bread Pudding
On a pint of fine stale bread or cracker crumbs pour boiling water and stir in a tablespoon of melted butter. After standing till thoroughly soaked, add two well beaten eggs and half a cup of sugar.
On the bottom of a buttered pudding dish put a thin layer of this batter, over it a layer of sliced peaches, and so on, dredging each layer of peaches with sugar, till the dish is full, having batter at the top. In a moderate oven about an hour will be required for the baking.
Serve with sweetened cream. This is an excellent way for using second quality peaches.
A frugal baked pudding that behaves like a cross between a bread pudding and a cobbler. The recipe assumes you know how much water bread crumbs will absorb, which is the one thing it should have specified.
- The unmeasured waterNo quantity is given for the boiling water. Add it a little at a time until the crumbs are uniformly moist and hold together when pressed, but with no free liquid in the bowl — roughly a cup for a pint of dry crumbs, less for softer bread. Too much and the layers will not hold their shape.
- A pint of crumbsThat is 2 cups by volume, not weight; the actual weight varies a good deal with how dry and how fine the crumbs are. Crumbs from fresh bread will pack and turn gluey; dry the bread out in a low oven first if you have nothing stale.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. An hour at that temperature suits a dish of about 1 1/2 quarts (the recipe specifies no size); the pudding is done when the top is set and lightly browned and a knife inserted at the centre comes out clean.
- Cracker crumbsThe period alternative means plain crackers, soda crackers or water biscuits, rather than seasoned ones. Cracker crumbs tend to give a denser pudding.
- Peeling the peachesThe recipe does not say whether to peel; peeled fruit is the likelier intention, and scalding to slip the skins was a common period method. Unpeeled slices leave leathery strips through the layers. Freestone peaches are far easier to slice than clingstone.
- "Second quality peaches"Bruised, small or overripe fruit, cut away and used up. Sugar is dredged over each layer in addition to the half cup already in the batter; taste and adjust rather than measuring, since modern supermarket peaches vary enormously in sweetness.
- Sweetened creamSimply pouring cream with sugar stirred in, served cold over the hot pudding — not whipped. Heavy or single cream both work; a spoonful of vanilla is a reasonable liberty.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a 1 1/2-quart dish would serve about six. It is best warm; reheat leftovers covered at 325F rather than serving them cold and set.
Bread puddings of this kind were the standard answer to two household surpluses at once: the heel of the loaf and fruit too blemished to preserve or serve raw. Good Housekeeping began publication in 1885, and its cookery pages sat squarely in the American tradition of economical domestic writing that ran from Catharine Beecher through Fannie Farmer, where the value of a receipt lay partly in what it saved. The closing line here — that this is an excellent way for using second quality peaches — is the point of the dish. Peaches were abundant and highly perishable in the American East and South before refrigerated transport was general, so late-summer cookbooks are thick with ways to absorb a glut: pickled peaches, peach leather, peach butter, and puddings like this one. The layering technique, batter and fruit alternating with the batter on top, is the same construction used for apple and berry versions.