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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from milk, arrowroot, egg, lemon rind, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Arrowroot Pudding

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the arrowroot with ½ cup of cold milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with the lemon rind.

  3. Strain the hot milk onto the arrowroot mixture.

  4. Add sugar and salt, then let it cool.

  5. Stir in the yolk of the egg.

Bake

  1. Gently fold in the whisked egg white.

  2. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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 milk into a smooth, silky custard as it heats.
Egg
Yolk enriches and sets the custard; the whisked white lifts the pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the egg sets.

The step that matters

Strain the hot milk onto the arrowroot mixture. Arrowroot thickens when heated and must be stirred while the hot milk is added, or it can clump. Straining removes the lemon rind and any lumps so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, lemon, 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.

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