Hawkie’s bread and butter pudding

It’s a while since I’ve looked through the little handwritten recipe notebook a kind friend lent me, knowing I’m interested in old recipes, particularly old family recipes. I was looking though, and as well as what has been written there are a few cuttings from newspapers, including one which wafted from between the pages and onto my keyboard. It was a little article, written by Denis Curtis, but there’s no way of knowing which newspaper it was in, and I can’t find out (at the moment) anything about Denis. I’m guessing he was (is?) a journalist and food writer, but I know nothing else – I must investigate him further. Meanwhile, here is his article, and his recipe (which I have transcribed but in a an easier to follow form:

Thought for food

BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING I had a nanny, but not until I was 23. Then I met Miss B.M. Hawkins. She was nanny to baby Simon in the house I shared with two doctors who were polishing up their medical school education with a spell in hospital. Hawkie had been nanny to Simon’s mother and myriad children, to all of whom she wrote and sent presents on their birthdays and a Christmas. It seemed quite natural that I should become one of her charges. On those mornings when I managed to get an hour’s sleep (having sat up most of the night to complete an article which should was due the day before), she would propel me to work with hot toast and tea. At night I would often share the nursery supper. She was munificent and reminded me a great deal of grandmama. She also shared the same simplicity in cooking. It is Hawkie’s veal and ham pie which I cook to this day; and it is her bread and butter pudding which I immediately promoted from the nursery into a luncheon dish (of which even my most sophisticated friends demand “seconds”).

• butter
• 5 thin slices of bread, buttered and trimmed of crusts
• 3 oz mixed fruit plus a few extra sultanas and 1 tspp sugar
• ¾ pint milk plus 1 dsp sugar and a strip of lemon peel
• 1 whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
• 2 tbsp double cream
• freshly grated nutmeg

1. Well butter an ovenproof dish
2. cut 5 thin slices of bread; butter and trim off the crusts
3. cut into 1in. wide strips and arrange tehse strips, buttered sides up, in the dish.
4. sprinkle each layer with mixed fruit (3 oz in all) plus a few extra soaked sultanas and a teaspoon of sugar
5. bring ¾ pint milk to the boil slowly with a dessertspoonful of sugar and a strip of lemon peel
6.  cool a little and stir in one whole egg beaten with an extra yolk
7. stir in 2 tablespoons of double cream
8. pour the mixture into the dish.
9. let stand for an hour, grate nutmeg over the surface and bake at 325ºF (gas markk 3) until the top is golden brown and the custard just set (about ¾ – 1 hour)