Bread and Butter Pudding

Today, bread and butter pudding have once again become popular because of their inexpensive ingredients and comforting flavour and texture. You can vary this recipe by substituting a fruit bread or brioche and adding a little cream. This pudding was served at the Directors’ Dinner of the Friends of Fort York on 21 November 2009.

Original Recipe:

Get a penny-loaf and cut it into thin slices of bread and butter as you do for tea; butter your dish as you cut them, lay slices all over the dish, then strew a few currants clean washed and picked, then a row of bread and butter, then a few currants clean washed and picked, then a row of bread and butter, then a few currants, an so on till all your bread and butter is in; then take a pint of milk, beat up four eggs, a little salt, half a nutmeg grated; mix all together with sugar to your taste; pour this over the bread, and bake it half an hour: puff paste under does best. You may put in two-spoonfuls of rosewater.

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. London: facsimile of the 1796 edition, (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1971, with an introduction by Fanny Craddock), 252-3.

Modern Equivalent:

Butter the bread on one side, as you would for tea. Place one layer of bread on the bottom of a 13″x 9″ (33 cm x 23 cm) buttered baking dish and sprinkle half of the currants over top. Place a second layer of buttered bread over top and sprinkle with the remaining currants. Beat the eggs with the milk and add the salt, nutmeg, sugar and rosewater. Pour mixture over the bread and bake at 350 º F (180 º C) for 30 minutes.

This recipe is from the Mess Establishment in the Officers’ Brick Barracks.