New england bread pudding

6 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
3½ cup Milk
¼ cup Butter
2 cups Dry bread cubes
½ cup Sugar
2 Eggs, slightly beaten
½ cup Sherry
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Mace
1 teaspoon Nutmeg
1 teaspoon Seedless raisins
½ cup Thinly sliced citron (optional)

Directions

The recipe is from "The New York Times Cookbook" by Craig Claiborne. It is for New England Bread Pudding (I'm from the South, what do I know?) It reads as follows:

1. Preheat oven to moderate (375 degrees F.) 2. Scald the milk, add the butter and pour the hot liquid over the bread cubes. Soak about five minutes, then add the sugar, eggs, sherry and spices. Add the caisins and citron.

3. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish. Set the dish in a pan of hot water and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, or one hour.

It seemed to me that there was a great deal of liquid in this recipe, but, since I had never tried this type of recipe before, I decided to follow as well as I could. I used 3 day old French bread which I cut into cubes. I also used (and this may be part of the problem) 1 % milk in the recipe. I put in a bit of candied orange peel instead of the citron, too. Big mistake. I picked it all out after I tasted it. The biggest problem was that it was too moist, not quite soupy, but close. Also, one cup of raisins was overwhelming. The dish tasted strongly of sherry and spices---a bit too strongly, to me. Was this all my fault or is this the way this type of bread pudding should be? Posted to FOODWINE Digest 05 Mar 97 by Rebecca Shiveler <SHIVELER_R@...> on Mar 6, 1997

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