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Dessert

Arrowroot Fueling

A custard-like pudding made with sponge cake, arrowroot, milk, sugar, isinglass, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Fueling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Cut the sponge cakes into thin slices and sprinkle with flavoring.

  2. Line a plain mold with the cake slices.

  3. Soak the isinglass in milk for 2 hours.

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk, sugar, and arrowroot (rubbed smooth in a little milk) along with the soaked isinglass.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a froth.

  3. Once the mixture reaches boiling point, add the egg whites and boil until thick, stirring constantly.

  4. Pour the mixture into the wet mold.

Finish and serve

  1. Make a custard with the egg yolks and pour it around the pudding before serving.

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 + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 pudding texture.
Eggs
Egg whites add airy lightness when beaten and stirred in; yolks enrich the custard.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that helps the pudding firm up when cooled.
Sponge cakes
Form the structure of the mold and soak up the flavoring.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture until thick after adding the egg whites. Stirring constantly prevents the arrowroot and egg whites from scorching or lumping, and boiling thickens the starch so the pudding sets properly when cooled.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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