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Arrowroot Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, arrowroot, sugar, eggs, and nutmeg and cinnamon extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Arrowroot Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Dissolve the arrowroot in a little water and add it to the milk along with the sugar.

  3. Let it reboil, then remove from heat.

  4. Beat in the beaten eggs and the extracts.

  5. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered earthenware dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. A few minutes before removing from the oven, sift 2 tablespoons of sugar over the top and return to glaze.

  3. Serve cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cinnamon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, set custard as it is heated.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the custard as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, sifted on top, caramelises to form a glaze.

The step that matters

Remove the custard from heat after reboiling. Arrowroot thickens when heated but its starch can lose thickening power if overheated or boiled too long, so the mixture should only be reboiled briefly before the eggs are added.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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