SAVE-ALL PUDDING

Scraps, crusts and crumbs of bread, 1 lb.
1 pint milk
3 eggs
3 oz. sugar
Nutmeg, ginger or allspice
2 oz. suet, chopped
4 oz. currants (optional)

Put any scraps of bread into a clean saucepan; to about a pound, put a pint of milk; set it on the trivet till it boils; beat it up quite smooth; then break in three eggs, three ounces of sugar, with a little nutmeg, ginger or allspice, and stir it all well together. Butter a dish big enough to hold it, put in the pudding, and have ready two ounces of suet chopped very fine, strew it over the top of the pudding, and bake it three quarters of an hour; four ounces of currants will make it much better.

From The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829

Comment: This is bread pudding under a catchier, frugal-sounding name. Of course any true frugality is promptly undercut by the addition of expensive spices, fruits, fats and suchlike ingredients, but in that time as in our own, image trumps reality every time.

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