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Arrowroot Sauce

A thickened sauce made with arrowroot, water, wine, lemon juice, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Arrowroot Sauce

Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Add the remaining water, wine, lemon juice, sugar, and flavoring.

  3. Stir the mixture over heat until it boils.

  4. For variation, omit the wine and use milk instead, or add the juice of any fruit.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Arrowroot + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together153 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Starch that thickens the liquid and gives a clear, glossy finish.
Wine
Adds flavor and a little acidity to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds sharpness that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over heat until it boils. Arrowroot starch needs to reach a boil to thicken fully. Once thickened, prolonged boiling or stirring can break down the starch, so the sauce thins. Remove it from the heat once it has thickened.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Broccolifits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, lemon, 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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