Old-fashioned food

@Inishowen - Boiled Onion! There's a memory... as a 1940s child I had many a boiled onion for lunch, and was recently wondering how my mother went about it. I seem to recall she cored the onion and stuffed it with whatever she had to hand - tiny slivers of bacon and so on - nothing wasted back then. I loved it!

Bread pudding - lovely. As a variation, my Mum would sometimes cook it in a basin as a steamed pudding - no crisp edges, but butter and caster sugar running like lava down the mountainside - delicious!

I have just lugged some caramel flavoured custard back, on an aeroplane, from France! Why can't we buy that here? Mind you, haven't tasted it yet!

Can anyone please provide me with a recipe for good old fashioned Bread Pudding like Mum used to make?
Thankyou.

I have been using this recipe since 1957, please excuse non-metric measurement.
1 egg
1/2 -3/4 pint milk
1/2-1 ounce sugar
2 thin slices of bread and butter
1 ounce currants or sultanas

Cut bread and butter into squares or fingers, remove crusts and lay in a greased pie-dish. Sprinkle fruit between the bread to prevent the fruit becoming hard.
Warm the milk with the sugar. Beat the egg. Add warm milk to beaten egg. Pour the custard over the bread and fruit and allow to stand for 1/2 hour.
Place in a moderate oven until pudding is set and golden brown.
Serves two.

Back in the 1940s we had a cat and mum used to cook sprats for it in a saucepan. The cat used to have to be put outside because the smell made him mad with hunger. He used to claw and scratch at the back door. I don't think tinned pet food was available at that time, anyone know?

At school we cooked all the classic English dishes, meat pie, lamb stew, moll mop herring in vinegar, Yorkshire pudding, and were even taught how to make all the different varieties of pastry and how to make and roll a swiss roll.

The recipe I have just posted is from a cookery book I bought to start secondary school in 1957. The book is full of all the old favourites, so if anyone is looking for nostalgia food, I have the recipes. I must say there was not one mention of garlic in the recipes, to be honest I don't think I used it until 1970.

That is bread and butter pudding. Bread pudding is different. I don't know how my mother used to make it, but there is a recipe here

Don't do as did the manageress of a cafe I worked in during my vacation in the late 50s. She kept all the left-over rolls, broke them up and used them with currants and water. That might have been OK, but she kept them long enough for them to have patches of blue and green mould.

Surprisingly, the result seemed very popular!

Those were all her ingredients, BTW.

I love bread and butter pudding. My recipe is similar to harrigran's except I use three medium slices of bread, and don't heat the custard beforehand. Just pour it over the bread and butter and fruit. Let it stand awhile, then bake in low oven for an hour.

Bread pudding is too stodgy and should be banned. I refuse to make it for DH. Even though his mum used to make it.

Ah bread and butter pud. It's fantastic with M&S leftover brioche with the choc chips. Or their fruit bread. But still not as good as my mum's with stale Mother's Pride.

Pigs trotter stew! I believe pigs trotters are quite fashionable now in some of the best restaurants but my own DC's were open mouthed and quite disgusted at the very thought

My grannie and mum boiled onions, we'd have them for supper with lashings of butter, salt and pepper, delicious.

I've seen a number of the trendy chefs roasting marrow bones and serving them as a starter, restaurant customers to eat the marrow from the bones with some equally trendy bread.

I mentioned this to our butcher, who saves me marrow bones for the dogs - he was stunned. But then, we're in the north

I remember Nigella making her version of bread and butter pudding. She used croissants or chocolate croissants and soaked them in milk etc and then poured the egg on top and baked.

Well! I've never made it as I don't eat so much wheat these days, but the method is well known in all parts of Europe. Its called Arme Ritter -Poor Knight- in Germany and is made with dark rye bread. Its something mothers always had to hand for hungry children.