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Dessert

Arrow-root Pudding

A sweet custard-like pudding made with arrow-root, 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

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.

Make the custard

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

  2. Pour boiling milk over the mixture, stirring briskly until combined.

  3. Add the powdered sugar and mix well.

  4. Incorporate the eggs and your choice of lemon juice, grated rind, or mace.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with thin potato paste.

  2. Bake the mixture by itself.

  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.

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 as it cooks.
Eggs
Set the pudding into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Powdered white sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling milk into the arrow-root. Starch must be wetted with cold milk first, then hit with boiling milk while stirring briskly. This swells the starch evenly and prevents lumps, so the custard thickens smoothly instead of clumping.

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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