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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A sweet pudding made with arrowroot, milk, butter, powdered sugar, peach kernel water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix arrowroot with enough cold milk to make a smooth batter.

  2. Boil 1 pint of milk and pour it over the batter, stirring well to keep it smooth.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with the powdered sugar, peach kernel water, and eggs.

  2. Beat the mixture together for 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Place a crust at the bottom and edge of your dish.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Arrowroot + peachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 custard as it cooks.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the batter.

The step that matters

Pour the boiled milk into the batter while stirring. Adding hot milk all at once can cause arrowroot to clump. Constant stirring spreads the starch evenly so it thickens into a smooth custard rather than lumps.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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