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Chocolate Bread Pudding
Yolks 2 eggs 1 pint milk 4 tablespoonfuls grated chocolate I 1½ cups stale breadcrumbs (soaked 2 tablespoonfuls butter 1/3 cup sugar Whites 2 eggs in cup water) 2 tablespoonfuls powdered sugar
The page survives as an ingredient list only — the method has dropped out in the original setting, and the parenthetical "(soaked in cup water)" belongs with the breadcrumbs. What follows fills the gaps a competent cook would otherwise have to guess at.
- Grated chocolateIn a book of this period this means unsweetened block chocolate scraped on a grater, not cocoa powder and not chips. Four tablespoons of gratings is roughly 1 oz; melt it into the hot milk rather than stirring it in dry.
- The soaked crumbsThe recipe's parenthesis puts the stale crumbs to soak in a cup of water before they go into the custard; whether the crumbs were then drained or added with their water is not stated. Skipping the soak with modern soft sandwich bread gives a pasty pudding; day-old firm white bread is the right raw material.
- AssemblingNo method survives. A workable order: scald the pint of milk with the chocolate and butter, pour it over the crumbs, stir in the sugar and the two beaten yolks, and let the mixture stand a few minutes so the crumbs swell before baking.
- OvenThe original gives no oven direction. A modern equivalent for a baked crumb custard of this size is a moderate oven, around 350F, for 35 to 45 minutes, until set at the edges and barely trembling at the centre. A dish of hot water under it keeps the custard from curdling.
- The meringueThe two whites and two tablespoons of powdered sugar listed last are almost certainly the topping rather than part of the batter. Beat them stiff, spread over the baked pudding, and return it to a cool-moderate oven for ten minutes or so to colour.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period the term often meant finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Either works for a meringue; superfine dissolves most cleanly.
- YieldA pint of milk and a cup and a half of crumbs makes a pudding for four; use a dish of at least a quart and a half, since the mixture alone comes to roughly a quart before the meringue. Serve warm rather than hot, with cream.
Bread puddings are the oldest and most durable form of thrift cookery — a way of turning the stale end of a loaf, which no household would throw away, into something worth putting on the table. The chocolate here is the modernising touch: drinking and baking chocolate had become cheap and widely available in American groceries by the late nineteenth century, and cookbook writers were briskly folding it into old standbys. The meringue cap of whipped whites over a baked custard was a standard finish of the era, the same one used on lemon and cottage puddings, and it neatly uses the whites left over from a recipe that calls only for yolks — thrift within thrift.