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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc Mange

A chilled dessert made from arrowroot, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Dissolve arrowroot in a little cold milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk and add sugar.

  3. Stir in the dissolved arrowroot and cook until thickened.

  4. Pour into a mold and let it set.

Serve

  1. Serve chilled.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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, glossy set pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved arrowroot and cook until thickened. Arrowroot must be fully dissolved in cold milk before adding it to the hot milk, otherwise it clumps. It thickens when it reaches a simmer and should be cooked until the mixture is no longer cloudy and thick, so the pudding sets properly when cooled.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar. 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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