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Foiled cARROWROOT

A clear broth thickened with arrowroot, flavored with lemon rind, sugar, and sherry or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Foiled cARROWROOT

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Moisten the arrowroot with 2 tablespoons of water.

  2. Boil the remaining water and pour it over the arrowroot mixture.

  3. Return to the saucepan, add sugar and lemon rind, and boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in the sherry or brandy, allow to cool, and serve.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 water into a clear, smooth broth as it heats.
Sherry or brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, fruity flavour at the end.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon and the alcohol.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water over the moistened arrowroot. Arrowroot is a starch that must be fully hydrated and heated to thicken. Adding the hot water to a smooth slurry prevents lumps, and the mixture must return to the saucepan and boil so the starch can gel properly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, sherry, 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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