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Cracker Custard Pudding
Make same as Bread Pudding, using two-thirds cup cracker crumbs in place of bread crumbs; after baking, cover with meringue made of whites two eggs, one-fourth cup powdered sugar, and one tablespoon lemon juice; return to oven to cook meringue.
This is a variation entry, not a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the book's Bread Pudding in front of you and swaps in cracker crumbs. A few things need translating before it will work in a modern kitchen.
- The base recipe you needThe book's Bread Pudding, roughly 1 quart scalded milk, 2 cups crumbs, 2/3 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 2 eggs and flavouring (vanilla, or nutmeg/cinnamon); check the figures against your own edition, as they differ between printings. For this version use 2/3 cup cracker crumbs instead of the 2 cups bread crumbs, as directed -- presumably because dry cracker crumbs are denser and take up more liquid per cup.
- What kind of crackerMost likely a plain New England common cracker or soda cracker: dry, barely salted, closer to a water biscuit than to a modern saltine. If you use saltines, drop the added salt entirely; unsalted soda crackers or water crackers are nearer the likely intent.
- "Powdered sugar"In this book powdered sugar means finely granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold under that name today. Superfine or caster sugar dissolves properly in the whites; confectioners' sugar will work but gives a softer, slightly starchy meringue.
- Oven and water bathOven -- the book gives no temperature; bake at 325-350F. It is done when a knife inserted near the centre comes out clean and the custard reads about 170-175F. Standing the dish in a pan of hot water is not called for here, but it will help keep a milk-and-egg mixture from curdling at the edges.
- Cooking the meringueReturn the pudding to a 350F oven for 12-15 minutes, until the peaks are set and lightly coloured. Spread the meringue so it touches the rim of the dish all round, or it will shrink away and weep as it cools.
- The lemon juiceA tablespoon of lemon juice into only two whites is a lot of liquid; add it after the whites are already at soft peak, a little at a time, or the foam will slacken. The acid does help stabilise the meringue and cuts the sweetness.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk fills a 1 1/2- to 2-quart dish and serves six. Best eaten warm, within an hour or two of baking — meringue over custard does not hold up well overnight in the refrigerator.
Cracker puddings belong to a New England pantry in which the hard common cracker was a staple as reliable as flour. Boston and Montpelier crackers kept for months in a barrel, and cooks used them wherever a recipe called for crumbs: in puddings, as a thickener for chowder and scalloped dishes, and as a stretcher in stuffings and forcemeats. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (first published 1896) is organised so that one full recipe anchors a run of variations, which is why this entry is a single sentence — the reader was expected to have mastered Bread Pudding first, an approach in keeping with the school's drill-based teaching. The meringue lid marks the dish as a step above plain nursery pudding: whipping whites by hand was work, and a browned meringue turned a thrifty crumb custard into something fit to bring to the table for company.