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English Arrowroot Pudding

A baked milk pudding flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon, thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Arrowroot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the arrowroot in a little cold water and add it to the boiling milk along with the sugar.

  3. Let it reboil, then remove from heat.

Bake and glaze

  1. Beat the eggs slightly and mix in the nutmeg and cinnamon.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  4. Sift 2 tablespoons of sugar over the pudding and return it to the oven to glaze.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs set into.
Arrowroot
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, glossy custard as it boils.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and browns on top when glazed.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Reboiling the arrowroot mixture. Arrowroot thickens only when it reaches a boil. Removing the milk from heat before it fully thickens leaves a thin custard that may not set properly after baking.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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