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Belle Pudding
Take some stale bread, remove all crust and reduce the white portion to fine light crumbs.
Butter the right number of cups or individual molds, put in the bottom of each a candied cherry or a slice of some home fruit such as canned or preserved peaches drained and made quite dry, then lightly fill with the crumbs. Having first measured to see how much liquid would be needed allow for each cupful of milk 2 well-beaten eggs, 1½ tablespoonfuls of sugar, a pinch of salt and ½ teaspoonful of vanilla. Beat eggs and sugar and add the scalding hot milk. Baste this slowly over the crumbs in the molds until all is used. Stand the molds in a pan of hot water and bake in a moderate oven until set in the center. Turn out on saucers and pour round each, just before sending to the table, any nice soft sauce, or heat the juice of canned fruit and thicken very slightly with corn-starch.
The next time dissolve I heaping teaspoonful of cocoa in each cupful of milk and you will have chocolate pudding. The third time mix with the bread some ground spice, in the proportion of 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon, ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg and ¼ teaspoonful each of cloves and allspice; this entitles it to be called spice pudding.
A baked bread custard in individual molds, with the proportions given per cup of milk rather than as a fixed recipe. The text has clear typesetting slips that need reading through.
- The ratio is the recipeEverything is scaled to the milk: for each cup of milk, 2 well-beaten eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla. Fill the buttered molds with crumbs, then work out how much custard you need; the instruction to "first measure" suggests gauging the capacity of the filled molds before mixing, though the recipe does not say by what means.
- NumbersThe sugar reads 1½ tablespoonfuls per cupful of milk, which gives a lightly sweetened custard, and the spice proportions are as printed. In the cocoa variation the stray "I" stands for the numeral 1: one heaping teaspoonful per cupful of milk.
- Moderate ovenGenerally reckoned at about 350F, sometimes higher. For a custard the lower end of the range is kinder: it sets more evenly and is less likely to weep, and a water bath at around 325F is the safer choice for small molds.
- Adding the hot milkScalding milk poured into beaten eggs will curdle them if it goes in fast. Add a little at a time while whisking, then strain the mixture before it goes over the crumbs.
- Basting the crumbs"Baste" here means to ladle the custard on slowly in stages, letting the crumbs drink between additions. Dumping it in at once floats the crumbs to the top and leaves a layer of plain baked egg beneath.
- DonenessIndividual molds in a hot water bath take roughly 25 to 35 minutes depending on size. The center should be just set with a slight wobble; a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean. Overbaking is what makes baked custard grainy.
- UnmoldingLet the molds stand 10 minutes out of the water, then run a thin knife around the edge before turning out. Fully cold puddings release cleanly but are harder to serve with hot sauce.
- The cornstarch sauceAbout 1 teaspoon cornstarch slaked in cold juice per cup of fruit syrup, brought to a boil for a minute to lose the raw starch taste. "Very slightly" is the point: it should coat a spoon, not mound.
- YieldOne cup of milk plus 2 eggs fills two standard custard cups or three small molds. For six servings, work from 3 cups of milk and 6 eggs.
Bread pudding of this kind was a standard way of using up the heel of a loaf, and its economy is plain enough: crumbs, milk, and eggs cost very little, and a candied cherry or a spoonful of preserved peaches at the bottom of the mold turned thrift into something that could be sent to the table on a saucer with sauce poured round. The name "Belle" is not explained in the text and may be no more than decoration. What is more telling is the structure of the recipe: it is written as a ratio per cup of milk, with variations appended for "the next time" and "the third time" -- a method a household cook could repeat rather than a single fixed dish.