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Baked Bread Pudding
2 pounds of white bread slices. 2 quarts of milk, or milk and water. 4 ounces of butter. 4 ounces of white sugar. 4 eggs. Nutmeg.
The bread should be quite free from any dark crust. Spread the butter on the slices and then cut them in dice shapes. Mix milk, sugar and eggs together and pour over the squares of bread in the baking pans. Bake till set in the middle. Any pudding sace will suit. "Hotel puddings," said a gentleman of good judgment and extensive experience of hotel and club life, for whom the writer was to prepare a little complimentary dinner, "hotel puddings I never eat nor do I care to offer them to friends. They are always too sweet--nothing but sweet--cloying--too sweet and rich at first, then further spoiled by a sauce all sugar. How can hotel cooks be so dull as not to see that they spoil their own work? Now I had a woman cook in New York whose efforts in that line were a perfect contrast to what I had found at hotel tables If you know of any pudding that is not an hotel pudding, you may add it to the list."
There are no puddings that are not hotel puddings. As in the case of English plum puddings we follow old patterns too much, and overleap the mark trying to make the rich enough richer.
A deliberately restrained bread pudding, written for volume service: two pounds of bread and two quarts of liquid make a hotel pan, not a family dish. The numbers are worth reading before you start, because the custard is far leaner than modern recipes assume.
- Scale it downAs written this makes a very large quantity; the recipe speaks of "baking pans," plural, and would serve perhaps 16 to 20. A quarter batch — 8 oz bread, 1 pint milk, 1 egg, 1 oz each butter and sugar — fits a standard 8-inch square dish and serves four.
- The custard is intentionally leanFour eggs to two quarts of milk is about one egg per pint, half or less what most modern bread puddings use. The result sets softly and tastes of milk and nutmeg rather than of egg. If you want a firmer, sliceable pudding, add eggs; do not blame the author for the looseness.
- Sugar level is the pointFour ounces of sugar across two quarts of liquid is barely sweet by current standards, and that is the argument the passage is making. Sweeten the sauce, not the pudding, or you undo the whole idea.
- "Bake till set in the middle"Use 325–350F. A quarter batch takes 40 to 55 minutes; a full pan considerably longer. It is done when a knife an inch off-center comes out clean and the center reads 170–175F. Past that the custard weeps.
- Water bathIn a domestic oven, set the dish in a larger pan with an inch of hot water — it prevents the edges curdling before the middle sets.
- "Milk, or milk and water"An economy allowance, not an improvement. Whole milk throughout is closer to the intent; skim plus water gives a thin, chalky custard.
- Bread and butterWhite bread with the dark crust removed, as the recipe specifies, buttered and then diced — buttering the slices flat is faster and more even than trying to coat cubes. Slightly stale bread absorbs the custard better; fresh bread tends to turn to paste.
- NutmegNo quantity is given. Grate whole nutmeg over the surface after pouring the custard, roughly a quarter teaspoon per quart of milk; pre-ground nutmeg loses much of its aroma.
- SauceThe recipe only says "any pudding sauce will suit"; the usual candidates would be a lemon or vanilla cornstarch sauce, hard sauce, or a light custard sauce. Given the argument in the text, keep it tart or spirituous rather than syrupy.
Bread pudding of this kind is a way of turning stale loaf ends into something salable. The quantities are bakeshop quantities, and the recipe assumes a kitchen that goes through pounds of white bread daily. What makes the page unusual is the complaint attached to it — the anonymous clubman's objection that hotel puddings are "nothing but sweet," then drowned in a sauce that is "all sugar." American hotel and club dining ran on rich, standardized desserts produced in quantity, and the author's grudging "there are no puddings that are not hotel puddings" is a concession about his own trade. The comparison to English plum pudding is telling: both dishes had drifted toward ever more sugar, fat and fruit as proof of generosity, and this austere custard — one egg and an ounce of sugar per pint of milk — is offered as the corrective.