Arrow Root Pudding

History

Arrow Root Pudding appears in Mary Randolph's The Virginia House-Wife, first published in 1824 and generally regarded as the first regional American cookbook. Randolph's version is a rich baked dessert: a quart of milk thickened with arrowroot into a batter, enriched with six eggs, half a pound of butter, half a pound of sugar, half a nutmeg and grated lemon peel, poured into a paste-lined dish, baked, and finished with sifted sugar. The arrowroot it calls for is the starch of Maranta arundinacea, a plant native to the West Indies and to Central and South America; its name is traced either to an Arawak word recorded as 'aru-aru' or 'Aru-ruta', or to the plant's indigenous use to treat poison-arrow wounds. By the 18th century arrowroot had become a major export of the West Indies. Sources also record arrowroot's reputation as an easily digestible starch, 'often recommended for the diets of convalescents or invalids' and, in the Victorian era, 'an easily digestible food for children and people with dietary restrictions'. That reputation attaches to plain arrowroot preparations, not to Randolph's butter- and sugar-rich baked pudding. The record does not document this specific pudding as a status symbol, a luxury, or a deliberate fusion of French pastry technique with tropical starch.

Ingredients

• 1 quart milk
• arrow root
• 6 eggs
• 0.5 pound butter
• 0.5 pound sugar, pounded
• 0.5 nutmeg
• lemon peel
• paste
• sugar
• citron

Instructions

1. Boil a quart of milk. Mix the hot milk with arrow root to form a thick batter. Stir in six eggs, half a pound of butter, half a pound of pounded sugar, half a nutmeg, and a little grated lemon peel. Line a baking dish with paste and pour in the mixture. Bake until nicely done. When finished, sift sugar over the top and decorate by sticking slips of citron all over the surface.