Home › Hot Desserts › Bread Pudding a La Francaise
Bread Pudding a La Francaise
1 pound of stale pieces of bread 1 pint of boiling milk 2 ounces of butter 1 ounce of candied peel Essence of vanilla or cinnamon to taste Put the pieces of bread into a basin, and pour over the boiling milk, and cover with a plate; let them stand for twenty minutes, and then add the butter, finely shredded candied peel and the flavoring. Mix thoroughly, and pour into a well-greased mold, and steam for three hours. Turn out carefully, and serve with jam or sauce.
A plain steamed bread pudding with no eggs and no sugar in the mixture, which tells you most of what you need to know about how it behaves and how to serve it.
- The hinge: it sets by starch, not eggWith no eggs to coagulate, this pudding holds together only because the bread has fully swelled and the mass has been beaten into a paste. Skimping the twenty-minute soak, or leaving lumps of dry crust, gives a mold that collapses when turned out.
- Stale bread, weighedOne pound is roughly a whole standard loaf, crusts included. Weigh it rather than measuring cups of cubes; the ratio of bread to a pint of milk is what determines whether the finished pudding slices or slumps.
- The pintIf the book is American, a pint is 16 fl oz; British books of the same period mean 20 fl oz. Start with 16 oz of boiling milk and add more only if the bread is still dry after soaking, since a wetter mix will not unmold cleanly.
- No sugar in the listThat is deliberate, and the jam or sauce is meant to carry the sweetness. If you want the pudding sweet in itself, 2 to 3 ounces of sugar stirred in with the butter will not upset the texture.
- Candied peelAn ounce is about 2 tablespoons once shredded. Modern supermarket mixed peel is often sugary and soft; whole candied orange or lemon peel, sliced thin, gives far more flavor in the same weight.
- Essence of vanilla or cinnamonEssence usually meant a concentrated flavoring, most often an alcoholic extract, so vanilla extract is a near-direct substitute at about a teaspoon. For cinnamon, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon does the same job, as cinnamon essence is now hard to find.
- Steaming setupGrease a 1.5 to 2 quart mold or pudding basin, fill it no more than three-quarters, and cover tightly with pleated foil or a tied cloth so condensation does not drip in. Stand it on a rack in a pot with simmering water reaching halfway up the sides, and top up with boiling water as it evaporates.
- Three hoursThat suits one large mold. Smaller individual basins are done in 60 to 90 minutes; the pudding is ready when a skewer comes out clean and the surface springs back. Let it rest five minutes before turning out or it will tear.
- YieldServes six to eight. Leftovers slice well cold and fry in butter.
Steamed bread puddings were one common way of turning a stale loaf into a hot dessert in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when bread was baked at home or bought daily and throwing it away was unthinkable. The à la Française in the title is more aspiration than provenance: English and American cookbooks are often said to have attached French tags to plain dishes given a little butter, candied peel and a flavoring essence. A pudding built from bread, milk and butter, with no eggs at all, would have suited a meatless table, and eggless bread puddings have a long history. The instruction to serve with jam or sauce does the work the missing sugar would otherwise have done.