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Arrowroot Cup

A sweetened arrowroot drink thickened with milk and sugar, served in a small cup with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot with 1 tablespoon of milk in a cup.

  2. Boil ½ pint of milk in a saucepan.

  3. Pour the boiling milk onto the arrowroot mixture and return to the saucepan.

  4. Add the sugar and stir over heat until thickened.

  5. Serve in a small cup with a pinch of grated nutmeg on top.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. 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 as it heats, giving the drink a smooth, light body.
Milk
Forms the base of the drink and provides its creamy liquid body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the mild, starchy flavour.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until thickened. Arrowroot starch only thickens once the mixture is hot enough for its granules to swell and gelatinise. Stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so it does not form lumps, and the drink should be removed from heat once it reaches the desired thickness.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, nutmeg. 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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