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Dessert

An Arrow Root Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

An 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 batter

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the arrowroot to create a thick batter.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add them to the batter.

  4. Melt the butter and mix it in along with the powdered sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a baking dish with pastry and pour the mixture in.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.

  3. Once done, dust with sugar and decorate with slips of citron.

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. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs set into.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the hot milk into a smooth, thick batter.
Eggs
Proteins set during baking, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Bake until just set and golden. Egg proteins set as they heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking makes it firm, dry, or grainy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

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