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Dessert

Arrowroot

A sweet dessert made from arrowroot, sugar, lemon rind, and almond flavor, set into a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Set the remaining water on the fire with the lemon rind until boiling.

Make the jelly

  1. Add the sugar and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the lemon peel and add the arrowroot, stirring constantly for 3 minutes.

  3. Add the almond flavor and pour into a mold dipped in cold water.

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. Arrowroot + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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
Starch that thickens the liquid into a clear, firm jelly as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body and mouthfeel.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oil to the boiling water, flavouring the jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot while stirring constantly. Arrowroot paste added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly and gels smoothly as it cools.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, sugar, almond. 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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