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Steamed Bread Pudding
1 1/2 pounds of white bread crumbs. 3/4 pound of sugar. 1/4 pound of butter. 1 quart of milk. 4 whole eggs and 8 yolks. 1 teaspoonful of baking powder. Lemon rind or extract.
Mix the bread crumbs and sugar together. Put the butter in the milk and boil them. Pour the boiling milk and butter over the bread and let stand awhile to steep. Beat the eggs and yolks together and mix them in; the flavoring, baking powder, then beat all together 2 or 3 minutes. Steam an hour or little longer in two buttered moulds. Serve with hard sauce, meringue sauce, butter sauce or maple syrup. Better write it a finer name on the bill-of-fare.
A professional bakeshop formula, given by weight and scaled for a dining room rather than a family. Halving it is sensible unless you are feeding twelve or more.
- The crumbs1 1/2 pounds means soft fresh crumbs torn or grated from a day-old white loaf — a large loaf's worth or more, about 12 loosely packed cups. Dry packaged breadcrumbs will absorb the milk differently and give a dense, pasty pudding.
- Weights to volume3/4 pound sugar is about 1 2/3 cups; 1/4 pound butter is one stick; 1 quart milk is 4 cups. The eggs total 4 whole plus 8 yolks, so keep the 8 whites for a meringue sauce, which is one of the sauces suggested.
- The hingeAdd the baking powder last and get the moulds into the steam at once. It begins working the moment it meets the warm, wet batter, and a batter left standing on the bench will steam up heavy.
- Steaming setupButter two 1 1/2 to 2 quart moulds or pudding basins, fill them no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or buttered foil tied down. Set them on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up, and keep the water at a bare simmer — a hard boil rocks the moulds and forces water under the covering.
- DonenessAn hour is a minimum for moulds this size; 75 to 90 minutes is common. The centre should read 175-180F and a skewer come out clean. Top up with boiling water if the level drops.
- LemonThe rind of one lemon, finely grated, or about a teaspoon of extract. Steep the rind in the hot milk with the butter for more flavour.
- Hard sauceButter creamed with powdered sugar and a little brandy, vanilla or nutmeg, chilled firm and served in a pat that melts over the hot pudding. Butter sauce is the same idea thinned and served warm.
- YieldTwo moulds serve roughly 12 to 16. Unmould after five to ten minutes' rest; leftovers reheat well in the steamer.
Steamed bread puddings sit at the point where thrift and the professional kitchen meet: the crumb of yesterday's loaf, enriched with a quart of milk, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, a quarter-pound of butter and twelve eggs' worth of yolks, becomes a moulded dessert grand enough to turn out at table. Steaming rather than baking is often said to be the older English method, done in a cloth or a tinned mould over a copper of water, and it produces a moister, more delicate crumb than an oven custard. The closing line " better write it a finer name on the bill-of-fare " is the most revealing sentence on the page. Books like this one had hotel and restaurant pastry cooks in view, and a French or invented name could sell a dish that plain English would not, since bread pudding in particular carried the stigma of leftovers. It is a useful reminder that menu language was a working tool of the trade rather than a description.