Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrow-root Custard

A custard made by combining arrowroot, milk, and eggs, then boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Arrow-root Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of arrow-root in 1 cup of cold milk.

  2. Boil 4 cups of milk in a saucepan.

  3. Beat 3 eggs in a bowl.

Make the custard

  1. Stir the arrow-root mixture into the beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the boiling milk into the egg mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pitcher and boil again as directed.

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Arrow-root
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Eggs
Set into the custard, adding structure and richness as the mixture cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the flavour and body.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk into the egg mixture while stirring continuously. Adding hot milk to eggs too quickly or without constant stirring can scramble the eggs. Continuous stirring spreads the heat evenly so the eggs warm gradually and the custard stays smooth.

“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.

You might also like

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