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Drink

Arrow-root

A sweet milk beverage thickened with arrowroot, flavored with cinnamon and sugar, optionally spiced with wine, lemon juice, or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Arrow-root

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Arrow-root

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a small bowl, mix the arrow-root with a little cold milk to form a smooth paste.

Thicken the milk

  1. In a saucepan, bring the remaining milk to a boil.

  2. Stir the arrow-root paste into the boiling milk.

  3. Cook for 1 minute until thickened.

Season and serve

  1. Add cinnamon and sugar to taste.

  2. If desired, stir in wine or lemon juice before serving.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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 + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Arrow-root
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly set custard-like texture when heated.
Milk
Forms the base of the drink and is thickened by the arrow-root as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and spice.

The step that matters

Mixing the arrow-root paste. Arrow-root must be fully smooth in cold milk before it goes into the hot milk, because starch dropped in as lumps will clump and stay grainy rather than thickening evenly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, sugar, wine, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, sugar, wine, brandy. 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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