Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrow-root Blanc Mange

A sweet arrowroot pudding made with milk, sugar, salt, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and arrowroot 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 ↓

Arrow-root Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix arrowroot with warm milk to form a paste.

  2. Pour the paste into boiling milk, adding sugar and salt.

  3. Stir briskly until thickened.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour into a mold that has been wet with ice water.

  2. Chill until cold and serve with sweetened cream or foamy sauce.

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. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Arrowroot + rosetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

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

  5. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, glossy set as it heats and gels.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and body that the arrowroot thickens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir briskly until thickened. Arrowroot starch can clump when it hits hot liquid. Constant stirring spreads the starch evenly, and it swells and thickens as it heats, giving a smooth texture instead of lumps.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

More arrowroot pudding recipes

Lemon 3 See all 190 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes