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Arrowroot Pudding, Baked or Boiled
INGREDIENTS, for moderatesized pudding. -2 tablespoonfuls of arrowroot, 1½ pint of milk, 1 oz. of butter, the rind of 1/2 lemon, 2 heaped tablespoonfuls of sugar, a little grated nutmeg, puff paste. AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Mix the arrowroot with as much cold milk as will make it into a smooth batter, moderately thick; put the remainder of the milk into a stewpan with the lemon-peel, and let it infuse for about ½ hour when it boils, strain it gently to the batter, stirring it all the time to keep it smooth; then add the butter; beat this well in until thoroughly mixed, and sweeten with moist sugar. Put the mixture into a pie-dish, round which has been placed a border of paste; grate a little nutmeg over the top, ARROWROOT SAUCE. and bake the pudding from 1 to 1 hour in a moderate oven, or boil it the same length of time in a well-buttered basin. To enrich this pudding, stir to the other ingredients, just before it is put in the oven, 2 wellwhisked eggs, and a tablespoonful of brandy.
TIME.-1 to 1 hour, baked or boiled.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Arrowroot Sauce (for puddings). -INGREDIENTS, for sauce for one pudding. -1 dessertspoonful of arrowroot, 4 dessertspoonfuls of pounded sugar, the juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 pint of water. AVERAGE COST, 3d.
Miz the arrowroot smoothly with the water; put this into a stewpan; add the sugar, strained lemon-juice, and grated nutmeg. Stir these ingredients over the fire until they boil, when the sauce is ready for use. A small quantity of wine, or any liqueur, would very much improve the flavour of this sauce: it is usually served with bread, or any dry pudding that is not very rich.
TIME. Altogether, 15 minutes.
A plain Victorian milk pudding thickened with arrowroot rather than eggs or flour, with a companion sweet sauce. It is straightforward once a few of the older conventions are read correctly.
- The hinge: slake, then temperArrowroot must be mixed to a smooth batter with cold milk before any hot liquid touches it, and the hot infused milk should be poured in gradually while stirring. Tipped in at once it seizes into lumps that will not stir out.
- Do not boil the finished mixtureDo not hold the finished mixture at a hard boil -- arrowroot thickens at a relatively low temperature, somewhere around 160-175F, and can thin again and go slack if boiled long. Bring it just to the point of thickening and stop there.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is conventionally reckoned at somewhere around 350F. The printed baking time here is garbled; bake until the pudding is set at the edges with a slight wobble in the centre, which will take on the order of an hour.
- QuantitiesTwo tablespoons of arrowroot to a pint and a half of milk gives a very soft, spoonable set rather than a sliceable pudding. The enriched version with two eggs sets somewhat more firmly, but still not firm enough to cut cleanly.
- The infusionSteep the lemon rind in the hot milk off the heat for about a quarter of an hour, then strain it out. Use pared rind only, with no white pith, or the pudding turns bitter.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is an unrefined soft brown sugar. Light brown sugar is the closest modern match; caster sugar works but gives a paler, less caramel flavour.
- Boiling in a basinIf boiled rather than baked, butter the basin well, cover it with a pleated round of buttered parchment and foil tied down, and stand it in simmering water reaching halfway up. Allow a full hour.
- The paste borderThe band of puff pastry around the rim of the dish is decorative and gives something crisp to eat with a soft pudding. It can be left off with no effect on the filling.
- Arrowroot sauceAdd the lemon juice at the end, off the heat, if you want a bright flavour; long boiling with acid weakens arrowroot's thickening power. The sauce should be clear and glossy, not cloudy. Nutmeg is called for in the method but omitted from its ingredient list.
- YieldThe pudding serves four to six; the sauce makes about half a pint, enough for one pudding.
Arrowroot reached British kitchens from the West Indies, where the starch is washed out of the rhizomes of Maranta arundinacea, and by Mrs Beeton's day it was widely sold as much as an invalid food as a cooking ingredient. It was prized for being bland, easily digested and free of the wheaty taste of flour, so nineteenth-century household books are full of arrowroot gruels, jellies and puddings for children and convalescents. That is the register this recipe sits in: cheap at eightpence, flavoured with nothing stronger than lemon peel and nutmeg, with a note on how to "enrich" it with eggs and brandy for people well enough to want it. The accompanying sauce, offered for "any dry pudding that is not very rich", shows the same thrift at work, using the same tin of starch to make a clear lemon sauce.