Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrowroot Blamange

A sweet milk pudding thickened with arrowroot, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and arrowroot work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blamange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 quart of sweet milk, reserving ½ cup.

  2. Sweeten the milk with white sugar.

  3. Mix 3 tablespoons of arrowroot with the reserved ½ cup of milk until smooth.

  4. When the milk boils, pour in the arrowroot mixture while stirring quickly to prevent lumps.

  5. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes until thickened.

Mold and serve

  1. Wet a mold with cold milk and pour the arrowroot mixture into it.

  2. Allow it to cool, then turn it out onto a plate.

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. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + arrowroottop 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 into a smooth, set pudding as it boils.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and sets as it thickens.
White sugar
Sweetens the milk and adds flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot mixture to boiling milk. Arrowroot starch can clump if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Stirring quickly while pouring disperses the starch so it thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

More arrowroot pudding recipes

Lemon 3 See all 190 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes