Skip to main content
Main

Arrowroot Sauce

A simple sauce thickened with arrowroot, sugar, and milk.

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

Why it works: Arrowroot and milk 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 teaspoon of arrowroot, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of cold milk.

  2. Gradually add ½ pint of boiling milk while stirring continuously.

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

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk 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 sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the arrowroot thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Pouring the boiling milk in gradually while stirring keeps the arrowroot dispersed so it does not clump. Starch needs to be fully wetted before heat thickens it, so lumps form if the hot liquid is added too fast.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

You might also like

Arrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes