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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with arrowroot, milk, egg, butter, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Prepare the arrowroot, milk, and sugar by mixing them together.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the well-beaten yolk of the egg.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  4. Whisk the egg white to a stiff froth on a dry plate and gently fold it into the pudding.

Bake and serve

  1. Allow it to brown for ten minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven or before the fire.

  2. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, set custard as it cools.
Egg
The yolk enriches and thickens the custard; the whisked white lightens it and adds structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.
Butter
Greases the pie dish so the pudding releases cleanly and browns at the edges.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. A stiff whisked white traps air that lightens the pudding. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leaves a denser result.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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