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Marmalade Pudding No. 2
3 ounces white bread crumbs 3 tablespoons marmalade 1 ounce butter Butter a pie dish, and put a layer of bread crumbs at the bottom, then a layer of marmalade, then another layer of bread crumbs, and so on until the dish is full, leaving bread crumbs on the top. Bake in a fairly hot oven for half an hour.
A three-ingredient layered breadcrumb pudding of the plainest English type. It works, but the original leaves two things unstated: where the butter goes, and how small the finished dish is.
- The butterThe ingredient list gives an ounce (2 tablespoons) and the method never mentions it again beyond buttering the dish. Use a little to grease, then dot the rest over each crumb layer; without it the pudding bakes dry and floury.
- CrumbsThree ounces of white breadcrumbs is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups fresh, from about three slices of soft white bread. Fresh crumbs, not dried packaged ones, which absorb differently and stay gritty.
- "Fairly hot oven"Read this as roughly 375-400F. The point is to set and lightly brown the top layer, not to cook a batter through, so a hotter oven than a custard pudding is appropriate.
- Dish sizeThree ounces of crumbs and three tablespoons of marmalade fill a dish of about two cups. Use a small pie plate or a one-pint gratin dish; in anything larger the layers will be too thin to hold together.
- The marmaladeThe recipe specifies only "marmalade"; in Britain at this date that would usually have meant a bitter Seville orange one. Modern sweet breakfast marmalades make the pudding cloying; if that is what you have, cut it with a squeeze of lemon.
- MoistureUnlike most baked puddings this one contains no milk or egg, so it comes out closer to a crumb crisp than a custard. Half a cup of milk or fruit juice poured over before baking gives a softer result, though it is a departure from the text.
- Yield and servingTwo to three small portions. Serve warm with pouring cream or a thin custard.
Breadcrumb puddings of this kind were a staple of British domestic cookery through the nineteenth century: stale bread was not thrown out, and a spoonful of preserve turned it into a pudding. Marmalade was a common store-cupboard item in Britain once commercial Seville orange marmalade became widely sold in the nineteenth century, so a cook could reach for it in any season when fresh fruit was gone. That it is numbered "No. 2" suggests the compiler had more than one version in hand.