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 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
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
Mix arrowroot with a little milk to make a thin batter, then add it to the boiling milk.
In a bowl, beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.
Stir in the butter, sugar, grated nutmeg, and lemon peel.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into a prepared baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly browned.
Once done, dust with sugar and decorate with slips of citron.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together159 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together11,318 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 without making it gluey.
- Eggs
- Provide structure as they set, giving the pudding its body.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the custard.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and aids gentle browning on the surface.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs set.
The step that matters
Adding the arrowroot batter to the boiling milk. Arrowroot must be mixed smooth in cold or warm milk first, then stirred into boiling milk so it thickens evenly. Lumps form if it goes in dry or is not stirred while it thickens.
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon):
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Arrowrootthe original
- Leekfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, 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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