Why it works: Sugar and arrowroot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,073 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Fluid Meat
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the liquefied meat with the white sugar.
Dissolve the mixture in the mucilage of starch or arrowroot.
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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Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,073 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Meat + arrowroottop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together68 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
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Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,866 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sugar):
- Mustardfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Arrowrootthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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