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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc Mange

A sweet arrowroot pudding made with milk, sugar, and flavoring, served chilled with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the arrowroot with cold water until smooth.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the arrowroot mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Sweeten and flavor the mixture to your taste.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and stir constantly until it just begins to boil.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Serve chilled with sugar and cream.

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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 milk into a smooth, sliced-ready custard as it heats and gels on cooling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and body to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavor of the starch and milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture while it heats. Arrowroot starch can clump and scorch if left unstirred, and it thickens only when heated enough. Constant stirring keeps it smooth and evenly thickened as it just reaches a boil.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, vanilla, cream. 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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