Many, many moons ago, long before ever-ubiquitous preservatives were employed as means to keep food fresher longer, and when humans typically smelled as though they messed themselves on the regular, food had a relatively short shelf life. Refrigeration wasn’t widely regarded as a useful tactic outside of the convenience of bitter cold winters, so dairy, meats and other treats went sour faster than you can convince a rational-minded person with a halfway decent comedic meter to watch an entire episode of NBC’s Whitney.
Given the state of those economically hard-hit and unhygienic times, food was not a commodity that was easily discarded. Given this, the people had to come up with ways of serving food long after its point of ripeness. Meat corrupted by time was covered in rich, heady sauces; softened, near-spoiled vegetables were thrown into soups and stocks; and breads…well, stale breads, it seems, were the belle of the tainted food ball. Their uses included stuffings, sops, and, easily the best use for this crusty comestible, bread mothereffin’ pudding (or puddin’ for my backwater and/or five-year-old readers).
If you’ve yet to have bread pudding, let me give you an idea of what your sadly deprived mouth is in for: it’s akin to eating tequila-soaked, opera-singing fairies while bathing in a thick sea of happiness. That is the perfect taste description. Bravo, me.
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