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Spice Pudding
One pint of bread crumbs; one pint of milk; one egg; one cup of raisins; one teaspoon of cinnamon; one-half teaspoon of cloves; one-half teaspoon of allspice; one-fourth teateaspoon of nutmeg; one teaspoon of melted butter; one-eighth teaspoon of salt. Seed the raisins and cut them in halves. Beat the egg light, add the sugar and then the milk, and pour the whole over the crumbs. Add the spice, butter, salt and raisins, stir well and bake until firm in a moderate oven. Serve with foamy or brandy sauce.
MERINGUE-To make a good meringue, beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff, dry froth. Take out the beater and with a silver spoon beat in powdered sugar. Sprinkle a small quantity of sugar on the egg, and beat it in with the spoon, taking long, upward strokes. Continue this until all the sugar has been beaten in; then add the flavoring, if there be any. This also must be beaten in. When done the meringue should be light, firm and comparatively dry. Use one tablespoon of sugar to each white of an egg. Always bake a meringue in a comparatively cool oven. If it be cooked for twenty minutes with the oven door open, it will be firm and fine-grained. Let it cool rather slowly. If a sugary crust be liked, sift powdered sugar over it before it is placed in the oven.
Should the meringue be not brown enough at the end of twenty minutes, close the oven door for a few minutes. Watch carefully to prevent it from cooking too much. The principal causes of failure are that the sugar is stirred into the white of the egg, which results in a heavy, watery mixture, or that the meringue is baked in a hot oven. Too great heat causes it to rise and then fall, making it tough and thin.
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A plain bread-and-milk pudding leaning hard on spice, with a meringue primer tacked on at the end. The ingredient list has one notable omission you need to fix before starting.
- The missing sugarThe method says "add the sugar" but no sugar appears in the list. Half a cup of granulated sugar suits a pint of crumbs and a pint of milk; three-quarters if you want it distinctly sweet.
- MeasuresA pint of bread crumbs is 2 cups, loosely packed soft crumbs from day-old bread rather than dry commercial crumbs, which will drink far more milk. A pint of milk is 2 cups.
- Moderate oven350F. Bake in a buttered dish of about 1 1/2 quarts for 45 to 55 minutes, until the center is set and barely trembles. A water bath is not called for but keeps the edges from toughening.
- Soak the crumbsThe recipe does not call for it, but pour the custard over the crumbs and let them stand 15 to 20 minutes before baking. Crumbs that go into the oven dry stay gritty and the pudding tends to separate.
- Seeded raisinsRaisins of this period were commonly sold with the seeds still in, to be split and picked out, which is why the recipe says to seed them; seedless varieties were also available. Modern seedless raisins need only be halved if you want them evenly distributed, or left whole.
- One egg is thinA single egg to a pint of milk gives a soft, bready set rather than a custard. Two eggs will hold a slice if you want to turn it out.
- The meringue note"Comparatively cool oven" is not defined in the book; roughly 300 to 325F is the usual modern equivalent, and the instruction to bake with the door open is doing the work of a low, dry oven. One tablespoon of sugar per white is a soft meringue for topping, not a hard shell.
- YieldServes six modestly. Foamy sauce is a beaten egg, sugar and butter sauce whipped over hot water; brandy sauce is the same idea with spirits added off the heat.
Bread pudding of this kind was a common use for stale loaves in nineteenth-century households, and the Butterick book — issued by the pattern company as part of its broader program of domestic instruction for middle-class American women — treats it as a base to be varied rather than a dish with a fixed identity. What makes this version "spice pudding" is the quantity of cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg, all of which were cheap and readily available by 1911. The meringue instructions appended here are general kitchen guidance, not part of the pudding, and the pointed warning against stirring sugar into beaten whites is a matter of technique.