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 ↓
Strawberry Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the stalks from the strawberries.
Pass the strawberries through a fine sieve into a basin.
Mix the caster sugar with the strawberry puree and stir until dissolved.
Mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk until smooth.
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.
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Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together817 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk):
- Sweet potatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Potatofits better
- 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.
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