Making a Birth-day Pudding

Birth-day Pudding

Butter a deep dish, and lay in slices of bread and butter, wet with milk, and upon these sliced tart apples, sweetened and spiced.   Then lay on another layer of bread and butter and apples, and continue thus till the dish is filled.  Let the top layer be bread and butter, and dip it in milk, turning the buttered side down.  Any other kind of fruit will answer as well.  Put a plate on the top, and bake two hours, then take it off and bake another hour.

This receipt (aka recipe) is from Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book by Catherine E. Beecher.  Catherine Esther Beecher was born in 1800 in East Hampton, Long Island.  She founded the Hartford Female Seminary in 1823 as well as other schools for young women in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin.  She wrote A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) and Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book (1846).

Notes:

After buttering my dishes I dusted them with sugar, before layering in the bread and butter.

I cut the crusts off my bread, as the pudding was for a special occasion, but you certainly don’t have to.  I saved the crusts as a treat for the wild birds in my yard.  You may also save them to make  stuffings, bread crumbs, or croutons.

I chose cinnamon, mace and nutmeg as my spices.

I baked my doll sized pudding in a custard cup, which would also be nice if you want to bake yours in individual portions.

If you wish to use a modern oven, preheat it to 350 degrees and bake puddings for 15 minutes, then  reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees and continued baking for the remaining 2 hours and 45 minutes.  I removed my doll size pudding from the oven after 30 minutes of total baking time.  Your baking time is going to depend a lot on the size of your dishes and the thickness of your pudding, so check your oven fairly frequently.  It’s also a good idea to put a cookie sheet under your dish, because my pudding bubbled over as it was baking.

If you are baking your pudding on the hearth, you may bake it in a beehive oven, dutch oven or a reflector oven.  When using a beehive oven, place the pudding on one of the cooler spots in your beehive.  If you use a dutch oven or reflector oven, make sure that you do not cook the pudding at too high a temperature.

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