Queen of Puddings

Queen of Puddings is a traditional British pudding. It is supposed to be made popular by Queen Charlotte, wife of George III.

Ingredients
milk
butter
breadcrumbs
sugar: for base and for top
2 eggs
jam

Equipment

food processor (optional)
saucepan
spoon
food mixer (optional)
knife to spread jam
casserole

oven: then
time in oven: 45 minutes, then 10 minutes

preparation time:
making breadcrumbs
heating milk and butter
(later) making meringue

At the end of the recipe, I suggest some additional or substitute ingredients.

Cooking process

Heat the milk, butter and sugar until the butter melts. Don't boil it! Remove from the heat.
Cut the crusts off the bread and make it into breadcrumbs. A food processor is the quickest way to do this, but if you don't have one, tear the bread into as small pieces as you can. The resulting pudding might end up a little lumpy, but it will taste fine. Pour the breadcrumbs into the warm milk. Give it a good stir.
and stir the yolks into the mix. Put the whites away somewhere safe, as you don't want them yet.
Pour the mix in the casserole and cook (without a lid) at for at least 45 minutes until set. It may need longer than that. Carry on cooking until the middle isn't wobbly.
Spread some jam on the surface. This is easy if it's home-made sloppy jam, but shop jam tends to be quite stiff, and it can be difficult to spread on this fragile surface. In this case, put small blobs of jam over the surface.
until stiff. Cover the pudding and jam with the egg white mix.
Put the casserole in the oven, again without a lid. This needs to cook for about 10 minutes at . until brown. If you want to cook it for longer, turn the heat down.

Other ideas

Some of the following ingredients are traditional and some are possible variations.

You can add a small amount of vanilla to the basic bread, milk and yolk mix before cooking. I don't think that any stronger spice would work.
The amount of jam (and type of jam) is up to you. Lemon curd might be nice.