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Chocolate Nut Pudding
1 cup soft bread crumbs 2 cups scalded milk 1 cup chopped nuts teaspoon salt 2 egg yolks * cup sugar juice and grated rind of 1 lemon 2 egg whites beaten until stiff Mix first seven ingredients; when well blended, cut and fold in the whites of eggs; pour into individual molds, and bake twenty to thirty minutes. Serve hot with cream or fruit sauce. See colored illustration, Plate V, opposite. 4. tablespoons rice 2 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon vanilla ½ cup beaten cream
A simple baked bread-and-egg custard, closer to a soft pudding than a cake, thickened by crumbs rather than flour. It is straightforward once a few of the book's conventions are translated.
- Soft bread crumbsThese are crumbs torn or rubbed from the inside of a day-old loaf, not the dry toasted crumbs sold in canisters. Dry crumbs absorb far more liquid and will give a dense, pasty pudding; use fresh white bread pulled apart by hand, lightly packed to the cup.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk until it steams and small bubbles form at the edge, around 180F, then pour it over the crumbs. This softens them quickly and gives an even set.
- Temper the yolksBeat the yolks with the sugar and add them once the crumb-and-milk mixture has cooled to warm rather than hot; yolks stirred into a still-scalding mixture can curdle before the pudding reaches the oven.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in this recipe. Around 350F suits the twenty to thirty minutes stated; individual molds are done when the centers are just set and a knife comes out clean.
- Water bathSetting the molds in a pan of hot water reaching halfway up their sides protects the edges from overcooking while the middles finish. Egg custards baked dry on a rack tend to weep.
- Ambiguous quantitiesThe salt and sugar measurements have lost their fractions in this printing. A pudding of this size takes about a quarter teaspoon of salt and half a cup of sugar; adjust the sugar to the tartness of the lemon.
- NutsWalnuts, pecans or almonds all work. Chop them fine rather than coarse so they suspend in the custard instead of sinking to the bottom of each mold.
- Yield and servingProbably enough for about six small molds, or a dish of roughly a quart; a single large pudding would likely need longer, perhaps 45 minutes. Serve hot, as directed, with cream or a thin fruit sauce; it sinks and firms as it cools.
Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and belongs to a long line of books issued by food firms to promote their product while offering a genuinely usable general cookbook. Puddings built on soft bread crumbs and scalded milk were a staple of the American dessert repertoire at the turn of the twentieth century: they used up stale bread, stretched a small quantity of eggs and nuts, and required no special skill with pastry. Folding stiffly beaten whites into a crumb custard and baking it in individual molds gave a homely mixture a company appearance, which is presumably why this one earned a place among the book's colored plates.