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Aarowroot to Thicken Sauces
Arrowroot may be used to thicken sauces for those who object to butter, as invalids often do. Mix a dessert-spoonful of arrowroot smoothly with a little cold water, and stir it into a pint of the boiling sauce. Time to boil, four or five minutes. Probable cost, 1d. Sufficient for one pint of sauce. ARROWROOT WATER.--A Drink for Invalids.
Boil the thinly-peeled rind of a small lemon in a quart of water. Pour it, when boiling, over a table-spoonful of arrowroot which has been mixed with two table-spoonfuls of wine or brandy, if these are allowed, if not, with a little cold water; stir it well, sweeten it slightly, and let it boil again two or three minutes. A little lemon-juice is an improvement. Sufficient to make a quart of the liquid. Probable cost, without the wine, 3d.
Two short entries: arrowroot as a butterless thickener, and a sweetened arrowroot drink from the sickroom tradition. The measures are Victorian and one of the timings works against the starch.
- Don't boil it that longArrowroot reaches full thickness almost as soon as it hits boiling liquid, and prolonged boiling breaks the starch down again into something thin and slippery. Stir the slurry in, let it come back to a bare boil for under a minute, then take it off the heat rather than holding it four or five minutes.
- Spoon sizesA Victorian dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons; a tablespoonful about 3 teaspoons, though English tablespoons of the period ran a little larger. Two teaspoons of arrowroot to a pint gives a light pouring sauce, not a coating one.
- Pint and quartImperial measures: the pint is 20 fl oz and the quart 40 fl oz, so the drink makes about five American cups. Scale up by a fifth if you are working from a US pint.
- The slurry is the whole trickArrowroot must be dispersed in cold liquid before it meets anything hot, or it seizes into lumps that will not disperse. Whisk it smooth, then pour it into the hot liquid in a thin stream while stirring.
- Arrowroot versus cornflourArrowroot sets clear and glossy and tolerates acid better than cornflour, so the lemon juice here does it no harm. Cornstarch will substitute at roughly the same weight, perhaps a shade more, but gives an opaque, slightly pasty result.
- Reheating and standingArrowroot-thickened liquids thin out if reheated, and the drink will slacken as it stands. Make either one shortly before it is wanted.
- Lemon rind"Thinly-peeled" means the zest only, with none of the white pith, which turns the water bitter over a long boil. The recipe sets no time for the rind; a short simmer is enough to flavour the quart.
- The costs1d and 3d are pre-decimal pennies, twelve to the shilling. They are useful only as a signal that this was among the cheapest things a household could offer a sick person.
Arrowroot, the starch from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea, came into British kitchens through the West Indian colonies and by the mid-nineteenth century was a fixture of invalid cookery rather than everyday cooking. It was prized as "light" and easily digested — a judgement based on period ideas about diet as much as on anything measurable — and its blandness was a virtue when the patient was thought unable to manage butter, cream or meat stock. Cassell's places both entries in the reference run of arrowroot uses, alongside arrowroot blancmange and gruel, and the parenthetical "if these are allowed" on the wine and brandy is a reminder that the sickroom cook took orders from a doctor. The name is generally traced to the plant's use by Arawak peoples in dressing wounds from poisoned arrows, though that etymology has always been contested.