Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓
Arrow Root Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Mix the arrowroot with a little milk.
Pour the mixture into a pint of boiling milk while stirring.
Finish and cook
Once cooled, add the eggs, sugar, and brandy or ratafia.
Boil the mixture in a basin and cover the top with buttered paper.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,738 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,340 recipes
Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
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Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together817 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Arrowroot + brandytop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together141 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as its starch swells when heated.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs enrich.
- Eggs
- Add richness and help the pudding set as they cook with the thickened milk.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to balance the milk and eggs.
The step that matters
Stirring the arrowroot into the boiling milk. Arrowroot is a starch that forms lumps when it meets hot liquid unevenly. Mixing it first with a little milk and stirring it into the boiling milk disperses the granules so the mixture thickens smoothly.
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, brandy):
- Sweet potatofits better
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Arrowrootthe original
- Potatofits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, brandy. 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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