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Rice Blancmange
1055. Take three table-spoonfuls of very finely ground rice, stir it gently into three gills of good new milk; add lump sugar to the taste, but not too much, or it will prevent its setting. Flavour it with lemon. peel or almond essence; set it on the fire, and let it boil thoroughly, stirring it and beating it extremely well for rather more than half an hour, and then pour it into a mould that has been soaked in cold water. 1056. Improved Rice Blancmange. -Mix three ounces of ground rice and one ounce of arrowroot with one quart of new milk, to which a little cream has been added. Sweeten it to the taste, and flavour it with laurel-leaf, cinnamon, or orange essence in the usual way. The addition of the arrowroot makes it cat much more tender and pleasant.
Two versions of the same milk pudding, thickened with rice flour rather than gelatine or isinglass. Both stand or fall on cooking the starch long enough to lose its raw taste and set firmly.
- Laurel leaf: leave it outThe "laurel-leaf" of Victorian flavourings is cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), whose leaves release hydrogen cyanide when bruised or steeped. It was used for a cheap almond note and is not a safe flavouring. Use the cinnamon or orange option, or a little almond extract.
- GillsA gill is a quarter-pint, so three gills is three-quarters of a British pint, about 1 3/4 US cups (roughly 425 ml).
- Ground rice and new milkGround rice is rice flour, more coarsely milled than the modern Asian-market kind but interchangeable here. "New milk" is simply fresh whole milk, undiluted and unskimmed.
- The half hour is not paddingRice flour needs long, low cooking to hydrate fully; pulled off early it tastes chalky and sets weakly. Keep the heat gentle once it thickens and stir constantly, since the starch settles and scorches on the base.
- Sugar and settingThe warning is sound: sugar interferes with starch gelling, so keep it modest, around 2-3 tablespoons for the first version. Sweeten a companion sauce or fruit compote instead if you want it sweeter.
- Wetting the mouldRinsing the mould with cold water and not drying it leaves a film that releases the set pudding cleanly. Do not oil it; the oil shows as a dull skin on the turned-out shape.
- Proportions of the second versionThree ounces rice flour plus one ounce arrowroot to a quart (an imperial quart, about 1.1 litres) of milk. Arrowroot thickens fast and clears; stir it into a little cold milk before adding, and stop cooking soon after it thickens, as prolonged boiling thins arrowroot.
- Yield and servingThe first recipe makes two small moulds or one 2-cup mould; the second serves six to eight. Chill at least four hours, and serve with stewed fruit, raspberry jam thinned with water, or cream.
Blancmange began as a medieval dish of pounded almonds, rice or rice flour, and sometimes shredded capon, its name meaning simply "white food." By the middle of the nineteenth century the almonds and meat had gone and the word covered any pale moulded pudding, set with isinglass, gelatine, cornflour, arrowroot or, as here, ground rice. Ground rice was among the cheapest of these thickeners, which may be why it comes first here, with the arrowroot version offered as an "improvement." Flavouring such puddings with laurel leaves belongs to the same economy: cherry laurel was a common shrubbery plant and gave an almond taste without the cost of almonds, a practice that fell out of use as its danger became better known.