Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrowroot Cream

A sweet, thickened milk dessert made with arrowroot, milk, sugar, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Arrowroot Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Boil the fresh milk with the lump of sugar.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the arrowroot mixture.

  4. Stir until it thickens.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a form.

  2. Allow to cool.

  3. Turn out.

  4. Serve with cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 cream as it is heated.
Fresh milk
Forms the body of the cream and carries the sweetness and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the milk.

The step that matters

Stir until it thickens. Arrowroot thickens when the starch granules swell in hot liquid. Keep stirring while the milk is hot so the starch disperses evenly and no lumps form.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

You might also like

Arrowroot PuddingArrowroot Pudding46 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes