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Dessert

Arrow Root Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, arrowroot, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and nutmeg, served in a pastry-lined dish.

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

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 ↓

Arrow Root Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the arrowroot in a small amount of cold milk, then stir the arrowroot mixture into the boiling milk as you would starch.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, lemon rind, and nutmeg to the butter mixture.

  3. Combine the cooled arrowroot mixture with the butter mixture.

Bake

  1. Line a baking dish with pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. 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 into a smooth custard that sets the pudding.
Eggs
Add structure and set the pudding as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it cream with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.

The step that matters

Stir the arrowroot mixture into the boiling milk. Arrowroot thickens quickly when heated, so it must be stirred in smoothly to avoid lumps. Adding it to cold or unevenly heated liquid can leave clumps or a thin, grainy texture.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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