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Arrowroot Pudding
2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 3/4 pint (1½ cups) milk ozs.) arrowroot 3 eggs 1 tablespoonful sugar 1 teaspoonful rose extract ½ cupful currants Mix the arrowroot to a smooth paste with three tablespoonfuls of the milk in a saucepan; boil the rest of the milk and pour it on to the arrowroot.
Stir well and boil for five minutes.
The text has come through the scanner badly: the ingredient column and its measures have been interleaved, and the method stops after the arrowroot is thickened. What follows is what the list is actually saying, and what the missing steps almost certainly were.
- Untangling the ingredient listRead it as: 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) arrowroot, 3/4 pint (1 1/2 cups) milk, 3 eggs, 1 tablespoonful sugar, 1 teaspoonful rose extract, and currants. The "1 1/2 cupful" of currants may well be a collision of two numbers — half a cupful would suit this quantity of milk better than a cup and a half — but the printed text gives no way to be certain.
- Arrowroot is not cornstarchIt sets clear and glossy rather than opaque, and it thickens at a lower temperature. Slake it in cold milk first, as directed, or it will lump on contact with the hot milk.
- The five-minute boilArrowroot reaches full thickness almost at once and then breaks down with continued heat, going thin and slippery. A minute of gentle bubbling after it clears is enough; five is the older instruction and works against the starch.
- Where the eggs goThe method as printed ends early. Beat the eggs with the sugar, then temper them with a little of the hot arrowroot before stirring the lot back in off the heat — added straight into the boiling mixture they will scramble.
- Rose extractRose flavouring of the period might be rosewater or a bottled extract, and strengths varied. Modern concentrated rose extract at a full teaspoon can taste of soap; start with a quarter teaspoon and taste.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Plump them in warm water for ten minutes and drain, or they will draw moisture out of the custard.
- YieldOn the quantity of milk given, perhaps four servings, or six in small cups. Good warm; it firms as it cools.
Arrowroot is the starch of Maranta arundinacea, a West Indian rhizome, and it reached British and American kitchens chiefly through the invalid cookery of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — it was thought lighter and more digestible than wheat flour or cornstarch, and cookbooks of the period file arrowroot gruels and puddings alongside beef tea and barley water for the sickroom. Enriched with eggs, sugar, dried currants and a scent of rose, it graduates from medicine to dessert, and the rosewater in particular is a survival of a much older English flavouring habit that vanilla is often said to have gradually displaced.