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Baked Bread Pudding, Plain but Excellent
859. Slice the bread, and pour over boiling new milk enough to cover it; let it stand together to soak twenty minutes. Then add three (or two) eggs, well beaten; a little lemon-peel, loaf sugar, and a squeeze of lemon to make it lighter. Beat for twenty minutes, or half an hour if time allows, before baking. Sift loaf sugar over it when turned out to send to table.
A frugal pudding with no oven temperature, no bread quantity and no baking time, so a little judgement is required. The one thing worth attention is the beating: the original asks for twenty to thirty minutes, which was the only leavening available before the mixture went into the oven.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives no weights. About 6 oz of stale bread (roughly 5-6 slices, crusts left on or off to taste) soaked in a pint of milk suits three eggs, with 2 to 3 oz sugar. Use a buttered dish of about two pints; it serves four.
- New milk"New milk" means fresh whole milk straight from the dairy, unskimmed and unhomogenised. Whole milk is the right substitute; skimmed milk gives a thin, watery set.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone to be broken and pounded at home, and loaf sugar was the whitest, purest grade. Ordinary granulated sugar works in the pudding; use caster or icing sugar for the sifting over the top.
- The beatingTwenty to thirty minutes by hand aerated the mixture in the absence of baking powder. A few minutes in a mixer will do much of the same work, though the equivalence is only approximate. Beat the soaked bread and eggs together vigorously enough that the crumb breaks down and the mixture lightens visibly.
- Lemon"A little lemon-peel" means the zest of about half a lemon, pared thin or finely grated; the older method was to rub a lump of sugar over the fruit. The squeeze of juice may slightly curdle the milk; the recipe gives its purpose only as making the pudding lighter.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F (180C) for 40 to 50 minutes, until the centre is just set and a knife comes out clean. Higher heat curdles the custard and makes the pudding weep.
- Turning outThe instruction to turn it out means the pudding was baked in a plain buttered dish or mould and inverted onto a plate. It will only hold its shape if fully set and rested ten minutes; serving from the baking dish is safer and no less correct.