Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrow Root Blanc-mange

A custard made from arrowroot, milk, and sweetener, flavored with lemon or vanilla, served with thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Arrow Root Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix arrowroot with a little cold milk to a creamy consistency.

  2. Stir this mixture into boiling milk.

  3. Flavor with lemon or vanilla and sweeten to taste.

  4. Boil while stirring until thick and smooth.

Set and serve

  1. Rinse a dish or mold with cold water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish and let it cool.

  3. Serve with thick cream and sugar, and optionally flavor with wine.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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, glossy custard as it boils.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard and carries the flavorings.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel when served.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring until thick and smooth. Arrowroot thickens when heated and then needs to be stirred constantly so it does not clump or stick. Stop heating once it thickens, since prolonged boiling can thin starch-thickened mixtures.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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