Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A baked pudding made with arrowroot, milk, sugar, eggs, and spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Arrowroot Pudding

Why it works: Milk and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,346 recipes. Both carry sabinene, which smells woody, terpenic. The science ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot with 2 cups of cold milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk with 1 cup of white sugar dissolved in it.

  3. Stir constantly and add a little mace or other spice.

  4. Beat in 4 eggs.

Bake

  1. Bake in a lined dish at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. For a clearer pudding, use water instead of milk and add 1 more egg.

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.

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.

  1. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  2. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 into a smooth, set custard as it heats.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its firm, custard-like body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens and gives the pudding its richness.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while adding the arrowroot mixture to the boiling milk. Arrowroot thickens quickly when heated and can form lumps if it is not kept moving. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the custard turns smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More arrowroot pudding recipes

Lemon 3 See all 190 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes