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Bread Pudding
1/2 loaf baker's bread 1 quart hot milk 3 well-beaten egg yolks 3 tablespoons shortening salt and sugar to taste nutmeg 3 egg whites beaten stiff Pour hot milk over bread, mash with fork. Add egg yolks and flavoring, seasonings and well-beaten egg whites. Bake like custard. Serve with raspberry jelly and whipped cream, or with sugar and plain cream. For chocolate bread pudding add 2 squares melted bitter chocolate with the hot milk.
A plain custard-based bread pudding with the whites whipped and folded in, which gives it a lighter, almost soufflé-like body. The only real instruction the recipe withholds is what "bake like custard" means.
- Bake like custardCustards of this sort were baked in a moderate oven, and a pan of hot water around the dish is the usual precaution; the recipe itself specifies neither, so roughly 325-350F in a water bath reaching halfway up the sides is an inference rather than the book's instruction. Baked dry and hot, an egg-and-milk mixture this loose is apt to curdle and weep before the centre sets.
- DonenessAllow 45 to 60 minutes. Once the whites are folded in the mixture runs to something over two quarts, so use a dish of at least 2 1/2 to 3 quarts. It is done when the edges are set and the centre still trembles slightly; a knife an inch from the middle comes out clean. Carryover heat finishes it as it cools.
- Half a loaf of baker's breadCommercial loaves commonly ran to about a pound, which would put half a loaf at roughly 8 ounces, or something like 5 to 6 cups of cubes, though the actual size is not recoverable from the recipe. Day-old white bread is the closest match. Fresh bread turns to paste under the fork; enriched brioche or sourdough will change the character entirely.
- ShorteningIn this era the word covered lard, vegetable shortening or butter interchangeably. Three tablespoons of melted butter is the best choice here, stirred into the hot milk so it disperses rather than pooling.
- Salt and sugar to tasteFor a quart of milk, figure 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Taste the milk mixture before the whites go in; once they are folded you cannot stir again without deflating it.
- The beaten whitesFold them in last, in two additions, with a spatula and as few strokes as will do the job. They are what separates this from an ordinary soaked-bread pudding, and overmixing loses the point.
- Chocolate variationTwo squares of bitter chocolate means 2 ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate. Melt it into the hot milk and increase the sugar, since unsweetened chocolate contributes bitterness and nothing else.
- YieldServes about 8. It is best warm or at room temperature the day it is made; refrigerated overnight it firms up and loses the lift from the whites.