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Dessert

Arrowroot Blancmange

A sweet, rose-flavored dessert made from milk, arrowroot, sugar, and rose-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the arrowroot in ½ cup of milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk until it boils.

Thicken and set

  1. Add the dissolved arrowroot to the boiling milk and stir well.

  2. Cook for a few moments, then add the sugar, rose-water, and salt.

  3. Pour into molds and set in a cool place.

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 + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Arrowroot + rosetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

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

  5. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk as its starch swells on heating, giving a smooth, set texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and provides body and richness in the finished blancmange.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the mild milk base.
Rose-water
Adds a delicate floral aroma.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved arrowroot to the boiling milk. Arrowroot must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first, then stirred steadily into the boiling milk. Added dry or unevenly, the starch clumps and the texture turns lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, rose. 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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