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Dessert

To Make Arrowroot

A clear jelly made by mixing arrowroot with water and boiling, optionally flavored with brandy, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Make Arrowroot

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a cup, mix the arrowroot with cold water until smooth and thick enough that a spoon can barely turn in it.

  2. Boil water in a kettle.

  3. Slowly pour the arrowroot mixture into the boiling water while stirring continuously.

  4. Continue stirring until the mixture forms a clear jelly.

  5. Add brandy or sherry, lemon, and sugar to taste if desired.

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

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

  3. Arrowroot + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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
Starch that thickens the liquid and sets it into a clear, glossy jelly when heated.

The step that matters

Pouring the arrowroot mixture into boiling water. Arrowroot must be added slowly while stirring constantly so the starch disperses evenly instead of forming lumps. Stirring also keeps it from settling as it thickens and turns clear.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (arrowroot, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, brandy, sugar. 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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