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Arrowroot Sauce
Mix a dessert-spoonful of arrowroot with half a pint of water. Put it into a saucepan and let it boil gently, stirring all the time. Add two table-spoonfuls of sugar, and any flavouring that may be preferred. A table-spoonful of brandy will be an improvement. This sauce is suitable for rice, bread, or plum pudding. Time, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A thin, clear pudding sauce of the plainest sort — arrowroot, water, sugar and a spoonful of spirit. The one thing to change is the cooking time.
- Do not boil it for ten minutesDo not hold it at a boil -- Arrowroot thickens the moment it reaches simmering point and then breaks down under prolonged heat, turning thin and slippery. Bring it just to the boil, stir for 30 to 60 seconds until it clears, and take it off. The stated ten to fifteen minutes probably covers the whole operation rather than the boiling alone; either way, do not keep it bubbling that long.
- Slurry firstMix the arrowroot with two or three tablespoons of the cold water to a smooth cream before adding the rest, or it will seize into lumps as it heats. Whisk continuously from cold.
- A dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons, or roughly 6 g. That is a light set — the sauce is meant to pour, not to coat. For a thicker sauce use a rounded tablespoon.
- Half a pintImperial measure: 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups or 285 ml. Using a US half-pint of 8 fl oz will give a noticeably stiffer sauce.
- Sugar and spirit go in lastSugar dissolved into the liquid before thickening interferes with the set, and alcohol boiled off is alcohol wasted. Stir both in once the pan is off the heat.
- FlavouringLemon or orange rind steeped in the water, a strip of vanilla, grated nutmeg, or a spoonful of sherry or rum in place of the brandy. The sauce carries flavour well because it has no dairy or fat to mute it.
- Serve it hotArrowroot sauces set as they cool and take on a slightly gluey texture. Make it while the pudding is turning out, and if it must wait, keep it warm rather than reheating.
- YieldFive or six modest servings alongside a steamed pudding — half a pint works out at about three to four tablespoons each.
Arrowroot is the starch washed from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea, a tropical American plant long cultivated in the West Indies, and by the late nineteenth century it reached British kitchens as a fine white powder, sold by chemists as well as grocers. It had a double reputation: a thickener that set clear rather than cloudy, and an invalid food thought gentle on weak digestions, which is why Victorian cookery books carry arrowroot gruels and jellies as well as sauces. Its presence here, in a book that prices the whole sauce at fourpence, suggests an everyday store-cupboard item rather than a luxury — a cheap way to put something glossy beside a plain boiled pudding when cream or custard was beyond the budget. Cornflour, cheaper and by then widely milled, gradually displaced it for this sort of work, though arrowroot keeps the edge in clarity.