Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian Arrow Root

A clear, smooth jelly made from arrowroot powder, boiled with water and optionally sweetened or flavored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,479 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Indian Arrow Root

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Mix the arrow root powder with enough cold water to form a paste.

  2. Pour in ½ pint of boiling water and stir briskly.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until it becomes a clear smooth jelly.

Flavour and finish

  1. Add sugar and sherry wine for adults, or essence of caraway seeds or cinnamon for infants.

  2. For a richer jelly, blend with animal jelly made from stag's horn.

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. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Wine + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  4. Caraway + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + carawaytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Arrow root powder
Thickens the boiling water into a clear, smooth, set jelly as its starch swells.

The step that matters

Mixing the paste with cold water before adding the boiling water. Starch added directly to hot liquid clumps before it can disperse. Mixing it smooth in cold water first lets the granules separate, so the boiling water thickens it evenly into a smooth jelly.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes