Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding, Steamed

A steamed pudding made from arrowroot, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pudding, Steamed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the arrowroot smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk and pour it over the arrowroot, stirring constantly.

  3. Return to the saucepan and cook over low heat until thick, then cool slightly.

Steam and serve

  1. Add the sugar, lemon rind, and beaten eggs, mixing well.

  2. Pour into a buttered mold and steam gently for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with custard, wine, or any suitable sauce.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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 milk into a smooth, set pudding texture as it cooks.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set firm when steamed.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs enrich.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, molasses-like flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Cooking the arrowroot until thick. Arrowroot must be stirred constantly while hot and cooked until thick, because it thickens quickly and can lump or stay starchy if undercooked or left to settle.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, lemon, egg. 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.

You might also like

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