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Arrow-Root Blanc-Mange
Boil in a saucepan (tightly covered) one quart milk and a piece of vanilla bean. Stir into half a pint cream, a teacup arrow-root, and a little sauce, mixing them smoothly. Pour into this the quart boiling milk, stir it well, put it in the saucepan again and let it simmer ten minutes. Sweeten to your taste. Set it in moulds to cool. Eat with cream, flavored to your taste.--Mrs. H.
A plain molded milk pudding thickened with arrowroot rather than gelatin or cornstarch. Two things in the text need sorting out before you start: the mystery "sauce" and the ten-minute simmer.
- "A little sauce"Most likely a compositor's error for "a little salt," which many comparable blancmanges of the period call for at this point. If that is the intent, a generous pinch goes into the cold cream-and-arrowroot slurry.
- Teacup of arrow-rootPeriod teacups were not standardised, but a common reckoning is about 3/4 cup, which here would be roughly 3 1/2 oz of arrowroot for 5 cups of liquid. Either way it is a heavy proportion: the pudding has to stand up when turned out of the mould. If you want a spoonable cream rather than a sliceable one, use half.
- The ten-minute simmerArrowroot thickens at around 160-170F and then breaks down with prolonged heat, going thin and slightly stringy. Bring the mixture back just to a bare simmer, stir until it thickens and turns glossy, and take it off within a minute or two rather than holding it for ten.
- Slurry first, alwaysThe cold cream is there to disperse the starch. Whisk arrowroot and cream perfectly smooth before the boiling milk goes in, and pour the milk in a thin stream while stirring, or you will get lumps that never break up.
- Vanilla bean"A piece" means an inch or two of pod, split, infused in the milk and then fished out. A whole bean for a quart is closer to modern taste. Do not substitute extract in the boiling milk; add it at the end if you must, since the flavor cooks off.
- Sweetening"To your taste" for this quantity lands around 1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar. Stir it in while the mixture is hot so it dissolves, before the pudding is poured into the moulds.
- Moulds and unmouldingRinse the moulds with cold water and do not dry them; the film of water releases the pudding cleanly. Chill at least four hours, or overnight for a large mould.
- YieldAbout five cups of pudding, which serves six to eight. The flavored cream poured over at the table is thin pouring cream, not whipped.
Arrowroot is the starch of Maranta arundinacea, a West Indian rhizome that reached American kitchens through the Caribbean trade and was prized in the nineteenth century as much for the sickroom as for the dessert table: it was thought lighter and more digestible than wheat flour or cornstarch, and arrowroot gruels and jellies were standard invalid food. That reputation is why a blancmange like this one sits comfortably in a Virginia household book alongside richer puddings. The name blancmange is simply French for "white food," and by the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia appeared in 1877 it had come to mean any pale molded milk pudding, whether set with isinglass, gelatin, ground almonds, or starch. The initials at the end are the book's usual method: Marion Cabell Tyree assembled it from contributions by some 250 named Virginia housekeepers, and "Mrs. H." is one voice among them.