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Dessert

Arrowroot Blancmange

A sweet dessert made from arrowroot, milk, and sugar, set in a mold and served with fruit compote or jam.

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 ↓

Arrowroot Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. Mix the arrowroot with ½ pint of milk to form a smooth batter.

  2. Heat the remaining milk with bay leaves or lemon rind until well flavored, then strain.

  3. Add the hot milk to the arrowroot batter, stirring continuously until it thickens.

  4. For added flavor, stir in brandy just before molding.

Mold and serve

  1. Grease a mold with salad oil and pour in the mixture.

  2. Once set, turn it out onto a dish and serve with fruit compote or jam.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 milk into a smooth, sliceable set when it is heated with liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the mild, starchy flavor of the set dessert.

The step that matters

Stirring while the hot milk is added. Arrowroot starch can clump if it meets hot liquid without constant stirring. Continuous stirring spreads the starch evenly so the mixture thickens smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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