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Arrow-root Custards

A custard made with eggs, arrowroot, milk, sugar, and flavoring, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk 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 in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs until well mixed.

  2. Dissolve the arrow-root in a small amount of milk.

  3. Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan until warm.

Make the custard

  1. Gradually add the warm milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the dissolved arrow-root, sugar, and flavoring, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into custard cups and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

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. Egg + milktop 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a tender structure as they cook and coagulate.
Arrow-root
Thickens the custard and gives it a smooth, glossy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that carries the custard's body and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the warm milk to the eggs. Pouring hot milk into eggs too quickly can scramble them. Adding it gradually while stirring constantly tempers the eggs, so the custard cooks smooth and stays evenly set.

“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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