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Sauce

Arrowroot Sauce for Puddings

A thickened sauce made with arrowroot, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg, used for dry puddings, bread, or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 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 ↓

Arrowroot Sauce for Puddings

7 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the arrowroot smoothly with the water.

  2. Put this mixture into a stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sugar, strained lemon juice, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Stir over the fire until it boils, when the sauce is ready for use.

  3. (Optional) Add a small quantity of wine or any liqueur to improve flavor.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

73Calories
1 gProtein
1 gFat
18 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 5 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Waternot in our table0
Arrowrootnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir over the fire until it boils. Arrowroot thickens when it reaches a boil and then loses thickening power if overcooked or stirred too long. Stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps from settling on the base of the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, sugar, lemon. 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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