Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrow-root Custards

A custard made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, and sugar, topped with meringue and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Arrow-root Custards

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 base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the arrow-root with a little cold milk, then stir it into the hot milk.

  3. Cook until thickened, then remove from heat.

  4. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with 4 tablespoons of sugar until smooth.

  5. Pour the hot mixture over the egg yolks and stir well.

  6. Return to the heat and stir for 2 minutes, then season to taste.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into custard cups.

  2. Place the cups in a pan of hot water and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a meringue with 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  4. After 3 minutes in the oven, top the custards with meringue and dust with powdered sugar.

  5. Return to the oven to lightly color the meringue.

  6. Serve ice-cold.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the other ingredients set into.
Arrow-root
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, sliceable custard texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set with a rich, smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that adds airy structure to the topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Returning the thickened mixture to the heat after adding the yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Pouring the hot mixture over the yolks gradually and stirring well tempers them, so the custard thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes