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Queen of Puddings
2 cups stale but not dry bread- I/2 cup sugar
½ cup sugar crums
Currant jelly or plum jam
1 quart scalded milk
2 tablespoons sugar for
3 eggs meringue
Soak the crums in the hot milk until soft; then add the egg-yolks mixed with the sugar, pour into a baking-dish set in a pan of water, and bake in a moderate oven about an hour, or until custard is set. When cool, spread a thick layer of the jelly or jam over the top. Beat the egg-whites until stiff, add the sugar gradually and beat until stiff, spread this meringue on top of the jam and place in the oven until a delicate brown. Serve hot or cold, with cream.
The ingredient column has been scrambled by the typesetter, but the method is clear enough to reconstruct: bread crumbs, half a cup of sugar, a quart of milk, three eggs separated, jam, and two tablespoons of sugar for the meringue.
- The ingredient list, untangledRead it as 2 cups stale (not dried) bread crumbs, ½ cup sugar for the custard, 1 quart scalded milk, 3 eggs separated, currant jelly or plum jam, and 2 tablespoons sugar for the meringue. The repeated "½ cup sugar" looks like a typesetting artifact of the scrambled two-column list rather than a second measure, since the method calls for sugar only twice.
- Moderate oven350F. The custard is set in a water bath, so the oven can run a little cooler without harm; anything hotter than 350F risks curdling the eggs at the edges before the centre firms.
- Three eggs to a quartThree yolks to a quart -- Only the yolks go into the custard, the whites being kept back for the meringue, so this is a soft ratio by modern standards — the bread does much of the setting. Expect a spoonable, bread-pudding texture rather than a sliceable custard. An extra yolk will firm it up.
- Stale but not dryThe instruction matters. Day-old crumb absorbs the hot milk and collapses into the custard; oven-dried or packaged crumbs stay gritty and give a sandy pudding.
- Spread the jam warmThe recipe says to wait until cool, but jam spreads far more evenly over a barely-warm pudding, and a cooled surface tends to tear. Warm the jam slightly if it is stiff.
- Meringue sugarTwo tablespoons for three whites is a very lean meringue by current practice — closer to a foam than the stiff, glossy topping most cooks expect. Up to 6 tablespoons (2 per white) beaten in gradually gives a more stable meringue that will not weep onto the jam.
- Browning the topReturn it to a 350F oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until the peaks colour. A broiler will do it in two or three minutes but burns the tips before the interior of the meringue is set.
- YieldA quart of milk makes a generous 2-quart baking dish, serving six to eight. It is best the day it is made; the meringue softens overnight.
Queen of puddings is the polished English descendant of a much older habit of thrift — stale bread soaked in milk and eggs and baked, the same impulse behind bread-and-butter pudding and the French pain perdu. The three-layer form, custard base, jam, meringue, is generally traced to Victorian England, and the regal name is usually explained as a nineteenth-century flourish rather than any documented royal connection. Its appearance in a Butterick household book of the early 1900s is unsurprising: the pattern company's domestic manuals were aimed at middle-class American housekeepers, and this pudding delivers a company dessert out of leftover bread, a quart of milk, three eggs and whatever jam is in the pantry. The choice of currant jelly or plum jam is itself period-specific — both were standard home preserves, tart enough to cut the sweetness of the meringue.