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Dessert

Arrow-root Cream

A thickened milk dessert made with arrow-root, lemon peel, cinnamon, and optional nutmeg, served with preserved fruit.

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 ↓

Arrow-root Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the arrow-root

  1. Mix the arrow-root with cold water and let it settle.

  2. Pour off the water.

Make the cream

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon.

  2. Remove the peel and stick.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the arrow-root, stirring well and frequently until cool.

Serve

  1. Serve in a glass or china dish, topped with grated nutmeg if desired, alongside preserved fruit or fruit tarts.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Arrow-root
Starch that thickens the milk as it cools into a smooth, set cream.
Milk
Forms the body of the cream and carries the flavour of the lemon and cinnamon.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling milk into the arrow-root. Arrow-root starch must be well dispersed in the liquid as it heats, or it can clump. Stirring well and often keeps the starch evenly distributed while the mixture thickens and cools into a smooth cream.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, cinnamon):

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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