Bread Queen
Use rule for Bread Pudding, using whites of four eggs for meringue, and the yolks in the pudding instead of the three eggs. Before spreading on meringue, cover pudding with a layer of jam. Brown meringue slightly in the oven, and serve pudding hot or cold with cream.
This is a variation, not a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the book's Bread Pudding rule in front of you and changes three things about it. A few notes on making the substitution work.
- What the rule actually asksTake the bread pudding as written but use only the four egg yolks in the custard in place of the three whole eggs, reserving all four whites for meringue. Yolks alone give a richer, softer set, so the pudding will be more custardy than the original.
- Meringue proportionsThe recipe gives no sugar for the whites; a usual proportion is about 2 tablespoons of sugar per white, so roughly 1/2 cup for four, beaten in a spoonful at a time after the whites hold soft peaks.
- Bake the pudding firstThe custard must be set before the jam and meringue go on. The book gives no temperatures; in a modern oven a bread pudding of this kind is usually done at 325-350F, when a knife near the centre comes out clean and the custard reads about 175F; it will still jiggle slightly.
- "Brown slightly"Put the meringue on while the pudding is still warm, spread it to the very edge of the dish so it seals and does not shrink, and give it 12-15 minutes at 350F. A hotter oven colours the peaks faster but weeps more syrup underneath.
- The jam layerUse a thick preserve, not a loose jelly or a runny fruit sauce, and spread it in a thin even layer. A wet jam soaks into the custard and slides the meringue off in one sheet when you cut it.
- ServingServe within a few hours; the meringue is at its best the day it is made and will slump and bead in the refrigerator.
This is the dish English cookery calls Queen of Puddings -- meringue browned over a layer of jam -- and the inverted name here most likely reflects how the book grouped its variations under the base recipe: Bread Pudding first, and everything built on it as Bread This and Bread That. Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company. The pudding belongs to the long tradition of using up stale bread with milk and eggs, capped with sweetened whites in the nineteenth-century manner: the yolks enrich the custard, the whites become the crown, and nothing is wasted.