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Dessert

Baked or Boiled Arrowroot Pudding

A sweet pudding made from arrowroot, milk, butter, lemon rind, sugar, and nutmeg, baked or boiled.

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

Baked or Boiled Arrowroot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix arrowroot with enough cold milk to make a smooth, moderately thick batter.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the remaining milk with the lemon peel for about 30 minutes.

Make the pudding

  1. Once it boils, strain the lemon milk into the batter while stirring to keep it smooth.

  2. Add the butter and mix well, then sweeten with moist sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie dish with a border of pastry and grate nutmeg on top.

Bake or boil

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours, or boil in a well‑buttered basin for the same time.

  2. For a richer pudding, stir in 3 whisked eggs and 1 tablespoon of brandy just before baking.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, setting the pudding to a smooth, tender body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a soft, custard-like set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a slightly caramel-like depth.

The step that matters

Strain the hot lemon milk into the batter while stirring. Arrowroot starch thickens and swells when heated, so if the hot milk is added without constant stirring, the starch clumps in pockets and the pudding turns lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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