Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
APPENDIX
Bread-and-Butter Pudding
(Antarctic Version)
Essential ingredients
Bread (plenty)
Sweetener - sugar is best, if not, use watered-down honey, treacle or syrup. At a pinch, jam (British)
or jelly (American).
In extremis
, cocoa or drinking chocolate. Not powdered orange drink, please.
Liquid - preferably some form of milk.
Desirable additional ingredients
Fat - butter, margarine or, if you must, oil
Dried fruit - any kind. If none available, use tinned fruit.
Liquor. There is usually a bottle of something lurking at established camps - Baileys, more often
than not.
Cinnamon
Egg - either liquid (the stuff that comes in cartons) or rehydrated powder. In the highly unlikely
event of receiving fresh eggs on a resupply, on no account should these be used in a b & b pud-
ding. They are far too precious.
Utensils
You will need a heatproof vessel. Established camps invariably have some kind of tin or pot among
the kitchenware; if not, try ransacking the scientists' equipment. You really do need an oven for this
dish. If, however, you are laid up in a tent, Beards love nothing more than experimenting for hours
with foil and other items in order to create an oven-on-a-stove.
Method
Slice the bread - any kind will do. (Do not, however, attempt to use Cabin Bread. This is a eu-
phemistic brand name for large, dry crackers. Like eating sawdust.) Apply the fat to the bread in
whatever way you can; I know how tricky spreading can be at twenty below, and how difficult it
is to butter bread with cooking oil. Just do your best. Grease the pot. Begin layering it with slices
of bread and 'butter'. Between layers, add handfuls of fruit, spoonfuls of whatever sweetener you
are using, sprinklings of cinnamon, dribblings of egg liquid and milk and splashes of any liquor you
have. Do not be tempted to use beer.
Antarctic dried fruit normally requires a lot of soaking - in the case of BAS dates at least ten
minutes' hard work with a geology hammer as well. If you are short of fruit, use nuts if you have
them, but avoid the salted kind. If you have neither fruit nor nuts you might as well start lobbing
