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Blanc Mange-Arrowroot
Mrs. P. H. Ayer.
Boil one quart of milk, reserving one gill to wet up your arrowroot with; when it boils up, stir in two and a half tablespoons of arrowroot, and after a few minutes add one tablespoon crushed sugar, one tablespoon rosewater, and a little salt; pour into moulds.
A simple stovetop starch pudding that sets as it cools. The whole thing hinges on slaking the arrowroot in cold milk first and then not overcooking it.
- A gillHalf a cup. Take that half cup of cold milk from the quart and stir the arrowroot into it to a smooth slurry before it goes anywhere near heat.
- Arrowroot behaves unlike flour or cornstarchIt thickens fast, at a lower temperature, and thins again if held at a hard boil. Add the slurry to the milk just as it comes up, stir until it turns glossy and coats the spoon, then take it off — one to two minutes, not the "few minutes" of a flour sauce.
- Two and a half tablespoons for a quartThat is a light set: soft, spoonable, and liable to sag if turned out of a mould. For a blanc mange that holds sharper edges on a plate, something nearer four or five tablespoons is usually wanted.
- Crushed sugarLoaf sugar broken down with a rolling pin, i.e. ordinary granulated. One tablespoon is very lightly sweetened by modern taste; two or three is more usual now.
- RosewaterSold in Middle Eastern and Indian groceries and worth seeking out over the baking-aisle flavourings, which are often much stronger. Add it off the heat — the aroma cooks off quickly.
- MouldsRinse them with cold water and do not dry them; the film of water releases the pudding cleanly. Chill at least three hours, then dip the mould briefly in hot water to unmould.
- YieldA quart of milk fills four to six small moulds. Serve cold with cream, stewed fruit or a spoonful of jam.
Blanc mange — from the Old French blanc manger, 'white food' or 'white eating' — began as a medieval dish of pounded almonds, capon and rice, and by the nineteenth century had narrowed to mean any pale milk pudding set with a starch or with isinglass. Cookbooks of this period often give several versions side by side, distinguished by the setting agent: cornstarch, rice flour, gelatine, Irish moss, and arrowroot as here. Arrowroot, a starch extracted from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea and imported chiefly from the West Indies, carried a reputation as the most digestible of the starches and was kept in Victorian households as an invalid and nursery food as much as a dessert ingredient, which may help explain the very restrained single tablespoon of sugar. The rosewater is older still — a standard sweet flavouring in English and American kitchens long before vanilla extract became cheap and commonplace.