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Chocolate Bread Pudding
2 cups stale bread crumbs 4 cups scalded milk 2 squares unsweetened chocolate 1/4 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla Soak bread in milk thirty minutes; melt chocolate in saucepan placed over hot water, add one-half sugar and enough milk taken from bread and milk to make of consistency to pour; add to mixture with remaining sugar, salt, vanilla, and eggs slightly beaten; turn into buttered pudding-dish and bake one hour in a moderate oven. Serve with Hard or Cream Sauce I.
A baked bread custard from Fannie Farmer's 1896 book, thickened by egg rather than starch. The measurements translate cleanly; the oven and the doneness test are where it goes wrong.
- Squares of chocolateA square is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so this calls for 2 oz total. Cocoa powder is not a substitute without adjusting the fat.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as about 350F, though period usage varied. Much above that and the eggs curdle and the pudding weeps liquid around the edges.
- Stale bread crumbsSoft crumbs torn or grated from day-old bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which are far denser by volume and will drink the milk into paste. Two cups of soft crumbs is roughly three thick slices.
- Scalded milkHeat to just below a simmer, when a rim of bubbles forms at the pan edge. Scalding is generally explained as dealing with souring organisms and enzymes in raw milk; with pasteurized milk it still helps the crumbs swell and shortens the soak.
- Tempering the eggsThe chocolate is loosened with some of the milk drawn from the soaking bread, then the eggs go in with the rest. Beat the eggs into the mixture only after it has cooled to warm, or add them last and quickly, so they do not set in threads.
- Water bathNot mentioned, but a baking dish set in a pan of hot water gives a smoother set.
- DonenessOne hour is a guide, not a rule. A knife inserted an inch from the center should come out clean while the very middle still trembles; carryover heat finishes it.
- Yield and sauceServes six to eight. Hard sauce is butter creamed with powdered sugar and flavoring, served cold on the hot pudding; Cream Sauce I in the same book is a butter and sugar sauce thinned with cream.
Bread puddings existed to use up the ends of loaves, and in a household baking its own bread that meant a steady supply. What marks this version as late nineteenth century American is the chocolate: unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in cakes scored into squares, had become cheap and widely available, much of it milled in Massachusetts, where Walter Baker's Dorchester works had been grinding cacao since the 1700s. Fannie Farmer taught at the Boston Cooking School, and her book calls for chocolate by the square in many recipes. The construction here is a custard rather than a batter, served with a poured or creamed sauce, a standard close to a plain family dinner of the period.