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Drink

To Make Arrowroot

A sweetened, flavored drink made by thickening arrowroot with boiling water and optional wine or milk.

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

To Make Arrowroot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drink

  1. Mix the arrowroot smoothly in a basin with the cold water.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture, stirring all the time.

  3. If the water is not boiling, put the mixture into a clean saucepan and boil until it thickens.

Flavour and serve

  1. Put the arrowroot into a tumbler, sweeten it with lump sugar, and flavour it with grated nutmeg or cinnamon, or a piece of lemon-peel, or, when allowed, 3 tablespoonfuls of port or sherry.

  2. If making with milk instead of water, mix 3 tablespoonfuls of cold water with the arrowroot, pour boiling milk over it, stir well, and add only sugar and a little grated nutmeg or lemon-peel, no wine.

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).

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, clear jelly-like drink as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Stirring while pouring the boiling water. Arrowroot starch clumps if it meets hot liquid without constant stirring. Keeping it moving disperses the particles so they swell evenly and the drink stays smooth.

“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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