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Arrowroot Pudding, Baked

A baked pudding made with milk, arrowroot, sugar, eggs, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Pudding, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the arrowroot smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk.

  3. Add the boiled milk to the arrowroot, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Boil gently until thickened, then cool slightly.

  6. Add the sugar and beaten egg yolks, stirring over low heat for 2-3 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  4. Bake until set.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 custard as it heats.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites add lightness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs set.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens its texture slightly.

The step that matters

Boil gently until thickened, then cool slightly. Arrowroot thickens when heated but its starch can break down and thin if boiled too hard or too long. Cooling slightly before adding the eggs also keeps the yolks from scrambling.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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