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Arrowroot Custard
Beat up an egg or two with some sweetened milk, stir in a teaspoonful of arrow-root and add sufficient hot milk for the mixture to fill a small buttered cup. Stand this in a stewpan with so little hot water that it cannot boil up over the sides of the cup and steam for twenty minutes. When done turn out. Serve hot or cold and with stewed fruit or jam. These custards may be flavored either with essence of vanilla or lemon.
A single-serving steamed custard with arrowroot as insurance against curdling. The original leaves the milk quantity to judgement, so here are workable numbers.
- ProportionsFor a cup of about 6 oz, use 1 egg to roughly 1/2 cup (4 fl oz) milk, with 2 teaspoons sugar. "Some sweetened milk" means a splash cold to slacken the eggs and dissolve the arrowroot; the rest goes in hot.
- ArrowrootStill sold as arrowroot starch or flour, usually from Maranta arundinacea. Slurry the teaspoonful into cold milk before any hot milk touches it, or it will seize into lumps that never disperse.
- Temper the hot milkAdd the hot milk to the egg mixture in a thin stream while stirring, not the reverse. Milk scalded rather than boiling suits the method, though the original specifies no temperature.
- Stewpan means bain-marieStewpan as water bath -- A saucepan with a lid, water an inch or so up the side of the cup. The original keeps the water shallow so it cannot boil up into the cup; holding it below a hard boil helps, as vigorous boiling tends to make steamed custards puff and weep.
- Doneness over clockTwenty minutes suits a small cup, but judge by the set: the custard should wobble as one mass with a moist centre, an internal reading around 175-180F. Past that it tightens and pinholes.
- Turning outRest 10 minutes off the heat, run a thin knife around the rim, then invert. Butter the cup properly, including the rim, or the top edge will tear away.
- Flavouring"Essence of lemon" is oil-based lemon extract, sharper than modern zest; a few drops is enough. Vanilla extract goes in with the cold milk, not the hot, so the aroma survives.
- YieldOne custard, one person. Scale straight up and steam several cups at once in a wide pan without extending the time much.
Arrowroot earned its place in Victorian and Edwardian kitchens less as a dessert starch than as invalid cookery: it was thought lighter on the stomach than wheat flour, and arrowroot gruels, jellies and custards fill the sickroom chapters of nineteenth-century household manuals. Its role here is practical rather than decorative, since a little starch raises the temperature at which egg proteins tighten and gives a beginner's custard a wide margin against curdling. That the mixture is steamed in a single buttered cup rather than baked in a dish points to the same domestic tradition, a portion made for one person at the stove. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book gathers a great many such small, thrifty preparations alongside the Waldorf's grander service, which suggests his readership expected a working household reference as much as a hotel menu.