Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrow-root Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon peel, and topped with citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Arrow-root Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the arrow-root to create a thick batter.

  3. Add the egg yolks, sugar, butter, nutmeg, and lemon peel. Mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pastry shell.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Once baked, decorate the top with slips of citron.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Sweeten the beaten egg whites with sugar and flavor to taste.

  5. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding.

  6. Return the pudding to the oven for a few minutes to brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Arrow-root
Thickens the milk into a set, smooth batter as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the filling, helping it set firmly when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that puffs and browns on top of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Returning the pudding to the oven to brown. Meringue browns quickly once its sugar and proteins heat up, so a few minutes is enough. Too long can scorch the peaks or overcook the custard beneath, which may weep or toughen.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More arrowroot pudding recipes

Lemon 3 See all 190 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes