Name: Arrowroot Blanc-mange
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; 1 ounce Bermuda arrowroot, ground fine; 1 teaspoon salt; Double refined sugar, to taste; Lemon extract or orange-flower water, to taste; 1 stick cinnamon or 1 vanilla bean (optional)

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 Blanc-mange

Ingredients

1 quart milk
1 ounce Bermuda arrowroot, ground fine
1 teaspoon salt
Double refined sugar, to taste
Lemon extract or orange-flower water, to taste
1 stick cinnamon or 1 vanilla bean (optional)

Directions

Make the blanc-mange

Boil the milk in a saucepan.
In a bowl, mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk to form a smooth batter. Add the salt to the batter.
Once the milk is boiling, stir the batter into the milk.
Continue stirring over gentle heat for 3 to 4 minutes until thickened.
Sweeten with sugar and add flavoring as desired.

Mold and serve

Dip a mold in cold water and strain the mixture into it.
Once cooled, turn the blanc-mange out of the mold.
Serve with currant jelly 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.

Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together553 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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, set custard as it heats and cools.
Milk: Forms the base liquid that the arrowroot thickens into a creamy dessert.
Sugar: Sweetens the blanc-mange and balances its mild flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter into the boiling milk. Arrowroot must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before heating, or it clumps. Stirring it into hot milk while continuing to stir keeps the starch evenly distributed as it gelatinizes and thickens.

“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.

Lemon Cake228 recipes

Lemon Ice147 recipes

Lemon Sherbet103 recipes

Cinnamon Rolls71 recipes

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Arrowroot Blanc-mange