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Brown Loaf
Remove the crumbs of a loaf of Boston brown bread, first cutting the top off in a single slice, and leaving the walls of the shell about three-quarters of an inch thick. Set this in a bowl and fill up the space between it and the sides and the cavity in the center with very sweet, clean old napkins. Set the bowl in a steamer and steam half an hour. At the moment of serving remove the cloths and lift the loaf carefully on to a platter. Fill the cavity with creamed lobster or salmon or with fricasseed oysters, previously prepared. Fit on the top of the loaf and serve.
The crumb of the loaf may be made into a pudding thus: Add to the crumbs two tablespoonfuls of creamed butter, a small cupful of molasses, an even teaspoonful of salt, a cupful of milk, a cupful of seeded raisins, one of currants and a tablespoonful each of candied lemon and orange peel, a teaspoonful of cinnamon, half a teaspoonful of cloves and allspice, two eggs, and flour enough to make a stiff batter. Lastly add a half teaspoonful soda dissolved in a little hot water, steam in a buttered mould for three hours, and serve with a liquid sauce.
Two recipes in one: a hollowed brown-bread case for a hot seafood filling, and a steamed pudding made from the crumb you took out. Nothing here is difficult, but both halves depend on steam and on timing the filling to the moment of service.
- The hinge: steam the shell, cook the filling separatelyThe bread case goes into the steamer empty, packed with cloth only to hold its shape; it is warmed and softened, not cooked with the filling. The creamed lobster, salmon or oysters must be finished and piping hot in a separate pan and spooned in at the last second, or the shell collapses and weeps.
- The napkinsThis is packing material, not an ingredient. Use plain unscented linen or several layers of cheesecloth washed without fabric softener or perfumed detergent, since the bread will absorb any smell. Fold them into the cavity and the gap around the loaf so the walls cannot slump while they steam.
- Boston brown breadA steamed loaf of rye, cornmeal and wheat flour sweetened with molasses, usually cooked upright in a mould or can, which would account for the cylindrical loaf with a lid-like top slice the recipe seems to assume. The canned brown bread sold in supermarkets works and comes out the right shape; a dense pumpernickel is the nearest substitute if you bake your own.
- OystersWhatever 'fricasseed' implies here, oysters need only two to three minutes in their liquor and cream, just until the edges ruffle; past that they tighten into erasers.
- Creamed butter and soda"Creamed butter" means butter beaten soft, not clarified or cooked. The half teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water and added last is the period habit for molasses batters, where soda reacts with the acid in the molasses; add it at the very end and get the pudding into the steamer promptly.
- Steaming the puddingButter a mould, fill it no more than two-thirds, cover tightly with buttered paper or foil and tie it down. Stand it on a rack in a pan of simmering water reaching halfway up, keep the water at a bare simmer for the full three hours, and top it up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- "A liquid sauce"The period distinction is against hard sauce, the stiff butter-and-sugar paste. A pouring sauce is meant: a thin vanilla or lemon custard sauce, or melted butter with sugar and a spoonful of spirits.
- YieldThe filled loaf will do for roughly four to six as a lunch or supper dish, cut across in thick slices. The pudding, made from the crumb of a whole loaf with the fruit, milk and eggs added and flour enough to stiffen it, will need a good large mould and serves a similar number; the recipe gives no quantity.
Filing this under Sandwiches makes sense in period terms: a hollowed loaf holding a creamed filling sat close to the bread cases and patty shells that filled the same role at ladies' luncheons and church suppers. Boston brown bread was itself a New England thrift item, a steamed loaf of rye and cornmeal sweetened with molasses that needed no oven, and creamed lobster or salmon was among the genteel fillings of the 1890s and 1900s. What is most characteristic of the book, though, is the second half of the entry: having cut the crumb out of a good loaf, the author will not throw it away, and turns it into a spiced steamed pudding with raisins, currants and candied peel. Using stale or surplus bread as the body of a pudding is one of the oldest habits in English and American cookery, and it survives here inside what is otherwise a party dish.