racahout

Racahout was a preparation of acorn flour, potato starch, cocoa, rice flour, and sugar, mixed with vanilla and designed to be dissolved in hot milk. French chemists and pharmacists encountered it in Algeria after France invaded in 1830 and saw in it something Europeans wanted: a mild, nourishing, easily digestible drink for invalids and children. By 1845, Paris druggists were selling it under the name racahout des Arabes, meaning racahout of the Arabs.

The pharmacist most responsible for popularizing racahout in France was M. Delangrenier, whose brand became the most widely sold version in the 1840s and 1850s. Alexandre Dumas mentioned it in his writings as a restorative. Charles Dickens's periodical Household Words covered racahout favorably in the early 1850s, describing it as superior to arrowroot for convalescents. Within a decade it was available in London chemists and had reached the American market.

The word itself is obscure in its origins. It appears to come from Maghrebi Arabic, possibly from a root related to raqq meaning thin or fine, though the exact Arabic form is not documented in classical dictionaries. The French chemist Louis René Le Canu analyzed racahout in 1844 and confirmed it was primarily starch: the cocoa and vanilla were flavorings added for the European palate, possibly not part of the original Algerian preparation.

Racahout fell out of fashion in the early 20th century as nutritional science developed and simpler prepared foods took its place. It lasted long enough to appear in Victorian medical reference works, with English citations dating to the 1850s. Today it survives mostly in culinary history texts and domestic manuals, a relic of colonial-era food exchange between North Africa and Europe.