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Sauce

Arrowroot Sauce

A clear sauce made from arrowroot, sugar, water, lemon, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Arrowroot Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the thickening

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little water.

  2. Boil the remaining water.

  3. Pour the boiled water over the arrowroot mixture.

  4. Return the mixture to the pan.

Thicken and flavour

  1. Add sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

  4. Stir in the cochineal.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 liquid as its starch swells and sets when heated, giving a glossy sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fresh citrus flavour.
Cochineal
Colours the sauce red.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil. Arrowroot starch only thickens fully once the liquid reaches a boil. If it is not hot enough, the sauce stays thin and cloudy, and stirring while heating helps prevent lumps forming as the starch swells.

“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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