Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Arrowroot Water
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the thin rind of a fresh lemon in 1 quart of water.
Mix 1 tablespoon of arrowroot with a little cold water, then pour it into the boiling water.
Stir well and sweeten to taste.
Let it boil for 5 minutes.
Squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon.
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.
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Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,073 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the water into a light, slightly silky body as it boils.
- Lemon
- Provides the acidity and fresh aroma, from both the rind and the juice.
The step that matters
Mixing the arrowroot into the boiling water. Arrowroot must be smoothed in cold water first, or it clumps when poured into hot liquid. Once it is fully dispersed and boiled, it thickens the lemonade evenly.
“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.
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