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Arrowroot Blancmange
2 1/2 cups milk 1/4 cup sugar 4 tablespoons arrowroot A few grains salt Heat two cups of the milk, with the sugar and salt, to boiling. Stir in the arrowroot rubbed smooth with one-half cup milk, and cook till thickened, then pour into cups wet with cold water. When thoroughly cold, remove from the cups, and serve with cream, or with fruit juice or a fruit sauce.
A plain milk pudding set with arrowroot rather than gelatine or cornstarch. It comes together in about ten minutes on the stove, then needs several hours in the cold to firm.
- Cook it out, but gentlyArrowroot thickens at a lower temperature than cornstarch and loses body if held at a hard boil. Bring the milk just to boiling, add the slurry, and stir over moderate heat only until it turns glossy and coats the spoon — a minute or two.
- Measuring the arrowrootFour tablespoons is a quarter cup, roughly 32 g. If you want a softer spoon pudding, drop to three tablespoons.
- The slurry is not optionalArrowroot rubbed smooth in cold milk disperses; tipped dry into hot milk it seizes into lumps that no amount of beating will clear. Whisk the half cup of cold milk and starch to a cream just before you need it, as the starch settles fast.
- "Cups wet with cold water"Rinsing the moulds and leaving them wet — not oiled — lets the set pudding release cleanly. Small ramekins, custard cups or teacups all work; a light film of water is all that is meant.
- Chilling time"Thoroughly cold" means several hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better. An arrowroot set is more delicate than a gelatine one and will slump if turned out warm.
- FlavourThe recipe as written is deliberately bland, which is why the fruit sauce matters. A strip of lemon peel or a split vanilla pod infused in the milk while it heats, then removed, brings it forward without changing the set.
- YieldTwo and a half cups of milk, so about 1 1/4 pints of pudding; enough for four small moulds.