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Arrowroot Gruel

A sweetened, buttered gruel made with arrowroot, milk or water, apples, cinnamon, and optional lemon rind.

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

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 Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the arrowroot gruel

  1. Mix the arrowroot gradually with the milk or water.

  2. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  3. If using milk, add a little butter and honey to taste.

  4. If using milk, serve.

  5. If using water, add one-eighth of the lemon rind. If using water, boil until flavored.

  6. Remove the peel.

  7. Add honey and butter to taste.

Make the apple version

  1. Slice the apples without peeling and place them in 2 quarts of water with the cinnamon stick.

  2. Boil for half an hour.

  3. Mix the arrowroot with ½ pint of cold water until smooth.

  4. Pour the smooth mixture into the boiling water and apples.

  5. Boil together for ten minutes.

  6. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  7. Let it cool; it will thicken.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 gruel as it boils and cools.
Apples
Add natural sweetness, body and fruity flavor to the liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the gruel.
Cinnamon stick
Infuses warm, aromatic spice flavor into the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Mix the arrowroot with cold liquid before adding it to the pot. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly. Dispersing arrowroot in cold liquid first lets the starch separate and thicken evenly once heated.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (arrowroot, milk, cinnamon, apple, honey, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, milk, cinnamon, apple, honey, butter. 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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