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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding — Hot

A sweet custard made with arrowroot, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and vanilla, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Pudding — Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Wet the arrowroot with cold water, then stir it into the hot milk until thickened.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy, then mix them into the thickened milk.

  5. Add nutmeg and vanilla for flavor.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Set the mold in a pot of boiling water, ensuring it doesn't float, and boil for one hour.

  3. After boiling, set the mold in cold water for one minute, then turn it out onto a hot dish.

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 + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 hot milk into a smooth, set custard texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the pudding as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give it a light, creamed texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the arrowroot in the hot milk. Arrowroot must be wet with cold water first so it disperses without lumps, then stirred into hot milk. Added dry or to cold liquid, it clumps and the custard turns grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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