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Arrow-root Gruel

A thickened drink made by mixing arrowroot with water or milk and simmering until smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 166 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrow-root Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a small quantity of cold water or milk.

  2. Slowly add more water while stirring.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pint of boiling water or milk, or half of each.

  4. Keep stirring until thick and smooth.

  5. Add cinnamon or lemon peel if desired.

  6. If made with water, wine can be added if allowed.

  7. Use brandy to prevent milk from souring.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy gruel as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep stirring until thick and smooth. Arrowroot starch can clump if it sits unstirred in hot liquid. Constant stirring disperses the granules so they swell evenly and thicken the gruel smoothly.

“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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