Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Arrowroot Sauce
Arrowroot Sauce
Mix two dessertspoonfuls of arrowroot with each half pint of milk (or white wine) used, and sufficient sugar to sweeten. Add a little grated orange or lemon peel, and then stir over a slow fire, and when thick remove to one side. Ten minutes afterwards remove the peel, and add a very small quantity of rum, or of maraschino or any other liquor. This is to be used for pouring over light puddings.
A thin pouring sauce in the old English style, thickened with arrowroot rather than flour or cornstarch. The whole thing lives or dies on heat control.
- The hinge: do not let it boilArrowroot thickens at a lower temperature than cornstarch, somewhere in the region of 160-175F, and begins to thin out again if held at a hard boil. "Stir over a slow fire" means low heat, taken off the moment it coats the spoon.
- DessertspoonfulsA dessertspoon is two teaspoons, so two dessertspoonfuls is about 4 teaspoons (a generous tablespoon) of arrowroot per half pint of liquid. That gives a sauce thick enough to pour, not to mound.
- Half a pintIn an American book of this date, a half pint is one cup, 8 fl oz. Doubling the recipe gives about two cups, enough for six to eight servings of pudding.
- Slurry firstArrowroot lumps instantly in warm liquid. Whisk it smooth with a few tablespoons of the cold milk or wine before the rest goes into the pan.
- Sugar"Sufficient to sweeten" runs to about 1 to 2 tablespoons per cup, depending on how sweet the pudding already is. The wine version wants the higher end.
- The peelUse a vegetable peeler to take wide strips of zest rather than grating, since "remove the peel" after ten minutes assumes pieces you can lift out. Grated zest can simply be left in if you do not mind the texture.
- Adding the liquorThe rum or maraschino goes in off the heat, after the peel comes out, so the aroma survives. The recipe gives no measure; a tablespoon per cup is one reading of "a very small quantity."
- Texture and holdingArrowroot gives a glossier, less pasty sauce than cornstarch, but it turns slightly slimy if reheated. Make it within an hour of serving and keep it warm over water.
Arrowroot is the starch washed from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea, a Caribbean plant; the best grade sold in the nineteenth century came from St. Vincent, and the name is generally traced to Arawak use of the root as a poultice for poisoned arrow wounds, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled. Its Victorian reputation rested on digestibility: arrowroot was the standard thickener of invalid and nursery cookery, gentler than flour and free of the raw taste that undercooked starch leaves. That is why a sauce like this belongs to the world of "light puddings" — steamed and baked sweets that wanted a glossy, unfloury sauce poured over them at the table. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, gathered a great many such small service recipes into his 1896 book, where they sit beside the hotel's grander cookery as the plain working formulas a large kitchen needed on hand.