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Arrowroot Blanc Mange
2 tablespoons arrowroot few grains of salt 2 tablespoons sugar 14 cups milk flavoring Mix arrowroot, salt and sugar; add milk, a little at a time, until the mixture is smooth, then add the remainder, and cook in double boiler one half hour, stirring all the time. Add flavoring, pour into molds, and serve with soft custard or cream.
A plain starch-set milk pudding of the sort that filled the invalid tray and the nursery supper. It depends on constant stirring and thorough cooking of the arrowroot rather than on eggs or gelatine.
- The hinge: cook it outArrowroot thickens well below boiling, so it is tempting to stop early, but under-cooked starch tastes chalky and weeps in the mold. The half hour in the double boiler with continuous stirring is what gives a clean set and a glossy finish.
- Milk quantityThe milk figure as printed ('14 cups') cannot be right and is almost certainly a mis-rendered fraction. Two tablespoons of arrowroot will set on the order of a pint of milk. Judge by consistency, cooking until the mixture coats the spoon heavily and pulls from the side of the pan.
- ArrowrootUse true arrowroot starch, not cornstarch. Arrowroot sets softer and clearer, with none of the raw cereal taste cornstarch leaves; it also breaks down if boiled hard or stirred after setting. The double boiler keeps the heat gentle and guards against scorching the milk.
- FlavoringThe recipe leaves the flavoring unspecified; vanilla, a strip of lemon peel, or rosewater are all period choices. Add extracts off the heat, since volatile alcohol-based flavourings fade over a long cook.
- MoldingRinse the molds with cold water and do not grease them; the film of water lets the pudding release cleanly. Chill at least three hours, and dip the mold briefly in warm water before turning out.
- Yield and servingThe yield depends on how much milk is used; as written it fills one small mold or a few individual ones. Soft custard is a thin stirred egg custard served as a sauce; lightly sweetened cream, or fruit and a spoon of preserve, does the same work.
Blanc mange began as a medieval dish of pounded almonds and capon set with rice or starch, and the name survived long after the meat did, meaning only "white food." By the time Lowney's chocolate company issued this book the pudding was starch-set and firmly domestic, made with whatever thickener the cook trusted: cornstarch, Irish moss, gelatine, or arrowroot. Arrowroot, washed and settled out from the rhizome of a tropical West Indian plant, carried a reputation through the nineteenth century as the gentlest of starches and was routinely recommended for children and for the sick, which is why it appears here in a light form.