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Dessert

Arrow-root Pudding

A sweet custard made with arrowroot, milk, sugar, eggs, and lemon or mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Arrow-root Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Wet the arrow-root with cold milk in a bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the arrow-root mixture, stirring briskly.

  3. Add the powdered sugar and mix until dissolved.

  4. Incorporate the eggs and lemon juice or grated rind or mace to taste.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with thin potato paste.

  2. Bake the mixture by itself.

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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Arrow-root
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard-like mixture as it cooks.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the pudding set as it bakes.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the warm mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the arrow-root mixture, stirring briskly. Arrow-root thickens when heated with liquid, so the milk must be hot and stirred constantly to prevent lumps and ensure even thickening.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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