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Arrowroot Cream
Mix a table-spoonful of arrowroot with two of cold water. Boil a pint and a half of new milk with a bay-leaf, or the thin rind of a lemon, and a dessert-spoonful of sugar. Strain it and pour it, boiling, upon the arrowroot; stir it frequently till it is cold, then pour it into a glass dish. This may be served with tarts or stewed fruits. Time to boil, ten minutes. Probable cost, 1s. for a pint and a half of cream.
A pouring sauce rather than a set cream — the proportion of starch is deliberately tiny, giving a liquid barely thicker than single cream. The name refers to what it imitates, not to any cream in the ingredients.
- The hinge: heat, brieflyArrowroot thickens at around 170F but breaks down and thins again if held at a boil. Pouring the boiling milk onto the slurry, as written, may not raise the whole mixture high enough to thicken; return it to the pan and bring it just to the first bubble, then take it off at once.
- Imperial measuresA pint and a half is 30 imperial fluid ounces, about 3.6 US cups or 850 ml. A dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons, so the finished sauce is only faintly sweet — intended to accompany sugared tarts and stewed fruit, not to stand alone.
- "New milk"Milk fresh from the cow, unskimmed and unhomogenised, roughly the fat of modern whole milk with a little more. Whole milk works; a splash of cream in the pint and a half brings it closer.
- The ten minutesThe stated boiling time applies to infusing the milk with bay leaf or lemon rind, not to cooking the starch. Ten minutes at a simmer will reduce the milk slightly and concentrate the flavour, which is the point.
- Lemon rindPare it thinly with a peeler so no white pith goes in — pith turns the infusion bitter over ten minutes of boiling. One bay leaf is plenty for this quantity; two will taste medicinal.
- Stirring till coldNot fussiness. Unstirred, the surface forms a skin and the starch can settle. Stir every few minutes as it cools, or cover the surface directly with film.
- Yield and servingAbout 3.5 cups, enough sauce for six to eight servings of fruit or tart. Serve cold from a jug or the glass dish specified; it will not hold a shape.
- The costingThe "probable cost, 1s." is given, as the recipe itself says, for a pint and a half of cream rather than for the ingredients actually used; milk, arrowroot and sugar would have come to considerably less.
Arrowroot, the starch washed from the rhizomes of Maranta arundinacea, reached British kitchens through the West Indies and was one of the nineteenth century's standard invalid foods: bland, easily digested, and thought suitable for children and convalescents when little else was. By the time Cassell's dictionary appeared it had migrated from the sickroom to the dessert table, valued in ordinary cooking because it thickens clear rather than cloudy like flour, and because a spoonful of it could stand in for cream at a fraction of the cost. The bay leaf infusion is often said to be an older English habit than vanilla, which was still expensive; pared lemon rind and bay were the everyday flavourings for milk puddings and custards throughout the century.