Bread Puddings

Some old and ultimately elaborate holiday sweets developed out of the very humble European tradition of using stale bread as the basis for substantial everyday dishes, both savory and sweet (e.g., Danish ølsuppe, “beer soup”; German Schwarzbrot pudding, “black bread pudding”; and Silesian Mohnpielen, poppy seed dumplings). Of these, perhaps the most famous are the impressive English holiday puddings, such as plum pudding (Christmas) and figgy pudding (Christmas and Palm Sunday), which traditionally included breadcrumbs in their base. An elaborate sweet bread pudding strongly associated with the solemn occasion of Lent is the Mexican capirotada, an outlier of the Spanish family of (primarily savory) migas dishes. See pudding and southwest (u.s.).