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Arrowroot Cream

A sweet custard made with arrowroot, milk, spices, sugar, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Arrowroot Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Mix arrowroot with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Boil milk with cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon rind, and sugar.

  3. Once boiling, pour in the arrowroot mixture and stir continuously for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Let it cool for 30 minutes, then stir in the egg yolk.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 cream as it heats.
Milk
Forms the body of the cream and carries the flavours.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, softening the set texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring while the arrowroot thickens. Arrowroot starch swells and thickens sharply when the liquid boils. Stirring continuously keeps the starch evenly dispersed so it does not clump or form lumps.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, 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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