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Dessert

Arrowroot Blancmange

A dessert made by thickening milk with arrowroot, lemon rind, and sugar, then flavored with brandy and garnished with bright red jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the arrowroot with water until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the milk, lemon rind, and sugar. Bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the milk mixture and pour it over the arrowroot.

  4. Heat the mixture on the stove until it thickens.

Mould and serve

  1. Grease a mold with oil instead of soaking it in water.

  2. Before pouring into the mold, add a little brandy.

  3. Garnish with bright red jelly or jam 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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set blancmange as it heats.
Milk
Forms the body of the dessert and gives it a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the flavour of the lemon rind.

The step that matters

Heating until it thickens. Arrowroot must be heated until the starch swells and thickens the liquid. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny mixture, while overheating can break down the starch's thickening power.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, brandy. 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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