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Arrowroot Souffle
Mix four table-spoonfuls of arrowroot with a cupful of milk. Stir it gradually into a pint of boiling milk, and add two table-spoonfuls of sugar on which the rind of a lemon has been rubbed. Let it boil for a quarter of an hour, stirring all the time. Take it from the fire and let it cool, then stir in the well-beaten yolks of six eggs. Well oil a plain tin mould, and when everything is ready, whisk the whites to a solid froth, and add them to the rest. Fill the tin three-parts full, and bake for twenty minutes in a good oven. Serve immediately. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 1s. 3d.
A Victorian sweet souffl tied together with arrowroot rather than flour, which gives a lighter, cleaner-tasting base but behaves differently on the stove. A few of the instructions need translating before you start.
- The hinge: do not overcook the arrowrootArrowroot thickens at just below boiling and then breaks down if held at a hard boil, going thin and slippery. The quarter of an hour specified assumes a slow fire and constant stirring; treat it as a gentle simmer only until the panada is thick and glossy, a few minutes at most on a modern burner.
- Pint and cupfulThis is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz / about 570 ml. The "cupful" of milk for slaking the arrowroot is not a standardised measure here -- use just enough to make a smooth pourable slurry, roughly 5-6 fl oz.
- "A good oven"The book gives no temperature, and range terms do not convert exactly. Read it as a fairly brisk oven; for a souffle of this size something in the region of 400F (200C), no fan, is a reasonable modern equivalent.
- Lemon rind rubbed on sugarThe original assumes loaf sugar, rubbed over the lemon until the crystals turn yellow and oily. Finely grated zest of one lemon worked into two tablespoons of caster sugar with your fingertips does the same job.
- Cool the base before the yolks"Let it cool" means to warm, not cold hot arrowroot paste will scramble six yolks instantly, and a fully cold base is too stiff to fold whites into. Blood temperature is the target.
- The mouldA "plain tin mould" is a straight-sided, un-patterned tin, filled three-quarters full so the mixture has room to climb. A modern souffl dish or charlotte mould works; oil or butter it and, if you want a better rise, dust the greased sides with caster sugar.
- Timing and servingTwenty minutes gives a set edge and a soft, custardy centre. There is no rescuing a souffl that waits, so have the table ready the instruction to serve immediately is the recipe's own warning.
- Yield and costFive or six portions. The 1s 3d is a late-nineteenth-century price, quoted so a cook could budget the dish against others in the book.
Arrowroot is the starch washed from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea, a plant of the Caribbean and Central America; the West Indian trade supplied the British market in the nineteenth century, St Vincent providing the bulk of it and Bermuda arrowroot carrying a reputation as the finest grade. It reached English kitchens largely through the sickroom rather than the dining room -- arrowroot gruel and arrowroot blancmange were standard nursery and invalid foods, prized because the starch was thought exceptionally digestible and because it sets clear and bland. Cassell's carried it in both roles, and this souffle is the ingredient promoted from the sickbed to the dessert course: a lemon-scented panada enriched with six yolks and lifted by the whites, at a cost the compilers were careful to state.