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Blancmange, American
Mix one ounce of arrowroot with a tea-cupful of cold water, and let it stand some minutes, until the arrowroot is settled. Pour off the water, and substitute a little orange-flower or laurel water. Boil with a pint of new milk, a stick of cinnamon, the thinly-cut rind of a lemon, or any seasoning that may be preferred. Pour it when boiling upon the arrowroot, stirring all the time. Put it into a mould, set it in a cool place, and it will be ready for use the following day. Time to boil, a few minutes. Sufficient for a pint mould. Probable cost, 6d.
This is a Victorian arrowroot mould rather than the almond-milk blancmange of earlier centuries, and one of its two flavouring options is a recognised poison. The notes below explain the terms and the hazard.
- Laurel water is the problemLaurel water was distilled from the leaves of cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), which are cyanogenic: crushed and steeped, they release hydrogen cyanide. It was used in Georgian and Victorian kitchens as a cheap substitute for bitter-almond flavouring, and it killed people. Strength varied wildly from batch to batch, so no quantity in a nineteenth-century recipe can be treated as a tested dose.
- The dish is not otherwise dangerousArrowroot, milk, cinnamon and lemon rind are all ordinary. The instruction is unsafe only because of the laurel water, but the recipe as printed offers it as a straight alternative to orange-flower water, which is why it should not be followed as written. Use a current blancmange recipe.
- Why the arrowroot is soaked and drainedSteeping the starch in cold water and pouring the water off would rinse away any earthy or musty taint; arrowroot sold in Britain was sometimes adulterated with potato or sago starch. The recipe does not say why the step is made. Modern arrowroot needs no such treatment; it is simply slaked in cold liquid so it does not lump.
- "New milk"New milk means fresh whole milk, unskimmed and (in this period) unhomogenised. Whole milk is the nearest equivalent, though unstandardised Victorian milk may have been richer.
- Imperial measuresA British pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml, so the mould is larger than an American pint mould. A teacupful is usually reckoned at about 5 fl oz. One ounce of arrowroot to a pint of milk is a modest proportion for a moulded pudding, and the recipe leaves it overnight in a cool place to set.
- No sugarThe recipe calls for none, which is typical of invalid and nursery cookery, where arrowroot puddings were fed to the sick.
- "Probable cost, 6d."Sixpence. Cassell's routinely gives a probable cost for each dish, for a household keeping accounts.
Blancmange began in medieval Europe as a genuinely white dish of pounded almonds, rice and shredded capon, savoury as often as sweet; the name is simply French for "white eating". By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the meat had long gone, and the term covered any moulded milk pudding set with isinglass, gelatine, cornflour, ground rice or, as here, arrowroot. Arrowroot itself is extracted from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea and was marketed in Britain as a delicate, easily digested food for invalids and children. The laurel water is a relic of an older and looser attitude to flavouring: cooks wanted the bitter-almond note of ratafia and reached for whatever gave it, a practice that pharmacists and coroners are often said to have been arguing against by the time this book went to press.