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Boiled Bread Pudding
857. Grate white bread; pour boiling milk over it, and cover close. When soaked an hour or two, beat it fine, and mix with it two or three eggs well beaten. Put it into a basin that will just hold it; tie a floured cloth over it, and put it into boiling water. Send it up with melted butter poured over. It may be eaten with salt or sugar. Another and Richer. -On half a pint of crumbs of bread pour half a
A plain boiled bread pudding of the sort every mid-Victorian kitchen kept in reserve: stale bread, milk, eggs, and an hour in a basin of boiling water. The original assumes you know the proportions, so a few numbers are worth pinning down.
- QuantitiesNone are given beyond "two or three eggs". A workable ratio is about 4 oz of grated crumbs to milk enough to soak them, with 3 eggs, in a basin the mixture just fills.
- Grated breadThis means stale, close-textured white bread grated on a box grater, not fresh soft sliced bread, which turns to paste and gives a heavy pudding. Day-old crumb from a firm white loaf is the nearest modern equivalent.
- The soakingPouring boiling milk over and covering close is what softens the crumb evenly; the recipe allows an hour or two. Beat it smooth before the eggs go in, and let it cool to lukewarm first or the eggs will scramble.
- "A basin that will just hold it"The basin should be filled nearly to the rim. A part-filled basin lets the cloth sag and water creep in, and the pudding turns out slack instead of holding its dome.
- CoveringA floured cloth tied over the rim is the period method, and the flour forms a seal against the water. A pleated round of baking parchment under foil, tied under the rim with string, does the same job with less fuss.
- The boilingStand the basin on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan so it does not sit on direct heat, with water coming halfway up the sides. Keep it at a steady simmer rather than a rolling boil, top up with boiling water as it falls, and allow about 1 to 1¼ hours; the pudding is done when it feels firm and a skewer comes out clean.
- "Melted butter"In a British book of this date melted butter is a sauce, not a bowl of liquid butter: butter worked into a little flour and thinned with water or milk to a pouring cream. Serve it warm, sweetened if the pudding is to be a sweet one.
- Salt or sugarThe pudding itself is unsweetened, which is why the last line offers a choice. Sweetened with sugar and a little nutmeg it is a dessert; taken with salt it was eaten alongside meat, much as a Yorkshire pudding was.