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Bread and butter puddings appear in most historic cookbooks although the earliest recipes used crumbs instead of slices. This post is dedicated to the hasty pudding made with slices of bread that many reject for being a quick and easy recipe with nothing to impress. I happen to be a lover of 'French toast' - which is very much the same although French toast is sugarless (and you can put the sugar on top) and cooked in a frying pan rather than baked or boiled.
An early version of sliced bread pudding was featured in The Accomplisht Cook (1660) by Robert May. His collection of fine recipes included many puddings, some of which used bread crumbs and were often baked. This was a great novelty that more recent cookbook authors, starting with Hannah Glasse, did not take very seriously, giving priority to boiled puddings. I've never made bread and butter pudding their way since what I like about bread is crust and boiled puddings don't have it. To be fair, The Art of Cookery (1747) does feature a baked pudding that's made from sliced bread. Here is the recipe, below a favorite seventeenth century pudding:
ROBERT'S VERSION
"[To make a Quaking Pudding either boiled or baked.]
Take a penny white loaf, pare off the crust, and slice the crumb, steep it in a quart of good thick cream warmed, some beaten nutmeg, six eggs whereof but two whites, and some salt. Sometimes you may use boil'd currans, or boil'd raisins.
If to bake, make it a little stiffer, sometimes add saffron; on flesh-days use beef-suet, or marrow; (or neither) for boil'd pudding butter the napkin being first wetted in water, and bind it up like a ball, an hour will boil it."
This recipe calls for no sugar but is quite delicious. It was a rare pudding made with bread slices and destined for noble palates, as it used cream, a large number of eggs, spices and dried fruit.
HANNAH'S VERSION
Take two halfpenny rolls, slice them thin, crust and all, pour over them a pint of new milk; boiling hot, cover them close, let it stand some hours to soak. Then beat it well with a little melted butter and bear up the yolks and whites of two eggs, beat all together well with a little salt. Boil it half an hour; when it is done, turn it into your dish, pour melted butter and sugar over it. Some love a little vinegar in the butter. If your rolls are stale and grated, they will do better; add a little ginger. You may bake it with a few currants."
This was more of a plain recipe, using simple ingredients. The baked version reminds strongly of French toast. A more refined pudding was made with added breadcrumbs, dried fruit, and ginger.
BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING
If you make this with cream and saffron, it will be Robert May's flesh day pudding. Replace those with milk and ginger and you will have the 18th century version.
Butter a medium-sized ovenproof glass pan and fill with slices of day-old white bread. Put sultana raisins in the gaps if liked. Whisk 4 eggs and 2 yolks with 100g caster sugar, gradually adding 500ml heavy cream and 1tsp each of nutmeg and saffron. Pour this mixture over the bread and leave to soak for a couple of hours. Brush the slices with melted butter and decorate with 3-4tbsp demerara sugar. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour or until golden. Serve warm.
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