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Arrowroot Blancmange
INGREDIENTS for 1½ pint mould.-5 tablespoonfuls of arrowroot, 1½ pint of milk, the rind of 1/27 lemon, sugar to taste. AVERAGE COST, 6d. let it boil, stirring it all the time, till it thickens sufficome ciently to from the saucepan, Grease a mould with pure salad-oil, pour in the blancmange, and, when quite set, turn it out on a dish, and pour round it some stewed fruit, or garnish it with red jam. A tablespoonful of brandy, stirred in just before the blancmange is moulded, very much improves the flavour of this sweet dish.
ARROWROOT.
TIME. Altogether, hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain milk pudding set with arrowroot rather than gelatine or cornflour. It stands or falls on how thoroughly the starch is cooked out.
- Slake the arrowroot firstMix the arrowroot to a smooth cream with a few tablespoons of the cold milk before it meets the hot milk, or it will seize into lumps. Infuse the lemon rind in the remaining milk, strain, then bring the whole back to the boil, stirring constantly.
- The hinge: boil it properlyThe hinge: cook the starch out -- Arrowroot thickens below boiling point, but the mixture needs to come to the boil briefly, as the recipe directs, to lose its raw, chalky taste. Do not hold it at a rolling boil for long, though; over-cooked arrowroot thins again and the blancmange will not set firm.
- QuantitiesFive tablespoons of arrowroot to 1½ pints of milk is roughly 50 g to 850 ml, a stiff set suited to turning out of a mould. For a softer, spoonable cream use about two-thirds of that.
- Imperial pintsA British pint is 20 fl oz, so the 1½-pint mould holds about 850 ml, not the 710 ml an American cook would assume.
- Lemon rindPare it in wide strips with no white pith and infuse it in the warming milk for ten minutes, then lift it out. Grated zest left in the mixture gives a speckled, slightly bitter set.
- Oiling the mould"Pure salad-oil" means a bland oil, not a dressing. A very thin film of a neutral oil is right; any flavoured oil will announce itself in a pudding this mild.
- Setting and turning outPour in while hot, cover the surface to stop a skin forming, and chill three to four hours. Dip the mould briefly in hot water to release it.
- Yield and servingServes four to six. Stewed plums, rhubarb or apricots suit it better than jam alone, which is very sweet against a base sweetened only 'to taste'.
- CostThe 6d. is Victorian pricing and has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Arrowroot is the starch washed from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea, a West Indian plant, and it reached British kitchens in quantity through the Caribbean trade. Nineteenth-century household books treated it as an invalid food above all: it was thought lighter and more digestible than wheat flour, and arrowroot gruels and puddings were standard fare for the sick, the convalescent and small children. That reputation explains why a blancmange like this one is barely sweetened and flavoured with nothing stronger than lemon peel, with the brandy offered as an optional addition that, in the recipe's own words, "very much improves the flavour". The name blancmange, from the Old French for "white food", once covered savoury dishes of pounded chicken and almonds; by Mrs Beeton's day it had narrowed to a moulded white milk pudding set with cornflour, arrowroot, isinglass or gelatine.