Bread pudding is one of my favourite comfort foods, and is also called bread and butter pudding, or whitepot. Variations of bread pudding exist in culinary cultures around the world, from Argentina to India, from the United Kingdom to Colombia. It is also called hasty pudding (although this term encompasses both bread pudding and rice pudding) because – as the name implies – it is a pudding that is knocked up quickly and takes very little time to cook. Every cook has a hasty pudding in their repertoire, a recipe up their sleeves.
The history of the bread pudding can be traced back to the early 11th and 12th centuries as a way to use up stale leftover bread. Instead of letting the bread go to waste, it was soaked in milk and eggs and butter or suet; a sweetener was added – although the puddings could also be savoury – and then it was made into a pudding. Early versions of bread and butter pudding sometimes substituted bone marrow instead of butter or suet.
Bread pudding sometimes appears on menus in trendy restaurants the world over, but it still does not – in my opinion – get the recognition that it deserves. It is referred to as ‘poor man’s pudding’, and has a reputation for being stodgy and lumpen. However, it is a beautiful pudding, and deserves to be celebrated in its own right.
In the picture, a nutty and sugary fig and walnut bostock is made from day old bread. Find the recipe here.
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