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Arrowroot Pudding, Steamed
Mix two table-spoonfuls of arrowroot with a cupful of milk. Flavour a pint and a half of milk with cinnamon, lemon, orange, almonds, or whatever may be preferred; put it on the fire, and when it boils, pour it upon the arrowroot. Stir well, and when it is cool add three well-beaten eggs, a table-spoonful of sugar, and the same of brandy. Put it into a well-buttered mould, cover it over, and steam it. When ready to serve, turn out, and put jam round it in the dish. Time to steam, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for six persons.
A steamed custard thickened with arrowroot rather than flour — light, faintly glossy, and set as much by the eggs as by the starch. Two details govern the result: the temperature of the milk when the eggs go in, and the gentleness of the steam.
- Cool the milk before the eggsThe instruction to add the eggs "when it is cool" is the hinge. Arrowroot thickens the instant boiling milk hits it, and if the eggs go into that hot mixture they scramble into threads that no amount of steaming will smooth. Let it drop to blood heat or below, then beat them in.
- Quantities in modern termsAn imperial pint and a half is 30 fl oz, about 3 1/2 US cups; the cupful of milk for slaking the arrowroot is additional. Two tablespoons of arrowroot to nearly a quart of milk gives a soft set — the eggs are doing most of the work.
- Arrowroot is not cornstarchArrowroot sets clearer and more delicately and does not carry the raw-cereal taste of underdone cornstarch, which is why Victorian invalid cookery favoured it. It is still sold as arrowroot or arrowroot starch. Cornstarch can be substituted in the same measure but the pudding will be cloudier and stiffer.
- Steaming, not bakingA covered mould standing in simmering water, the pan lid on, water halfway up the sides. Keep the water at a bare simmer — a hard boil drives the custard above the point where egg protein sets smoothly and the pudding turns weeping and honeycombed.
- Cover the mould properlyButtered parchment or foil tied down, pleated across the top to allow rise. Uncovered, condensation drips back in and the surface never sets.
- Ninety minutes is generousThat time suits a large single mould of the period. Start checking at an hour: a skewer into the centre should come out clean and the pudding should shrink very slightly from the sides. Individual dariole moulds need 30 to 40 minutes.
- Almond flavouringWhere almonds are named, use blanched sweet almonds steeped in the hot milk and strained out, or a few drops of modern almond extract. Historic recipes sometimes meant bitter almonds or ratafia; bitter almonds are not sold for kitchen use now and should not be sought out.
- Turning out and servingRest the mould five minutes before inverting, or the still-fragile custard tears. Warmed jam — apricot, raspberry, or redcurrant — slackened with a spoonful of water pours more evenly round the base. Serves six as written.
Arrowroot is the starch washed from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea, a West Indian and Central American plant, and by the mid-nineteenth century it arrived in British kitchens as a fine white powder from St Vincent, then a leading and much-celebrated source, though its clear commercial dominance of the trade came later. Its reputation was medical before it was culinary: it was the standard thickener of the sickroom, mixed with milk or beef tea and given to infants, invalids and convalescents on the grounds that it was bland, easily digested and free of the coarseness attributed to wheat flour. The name is generally traced to an Arawak word for a flour-yielding root, later reinterpreted in English as a reference to the root's supposed use against poisoned arrow wounds — a folk etymology rather than a documented one. A steamed pudding like this one sits at the point where the invalid remedy graduates to the family table: enriched with eggs, sugar and a spoonful of brandy, ringed with jam, and priced at eightpence to feed six.