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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from arrowroot, milk, lemon peel, sugar, and eggs, baked until set.

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

Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon 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 ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk in a bowl.

  2. Boil the milk with lemon peel and sugar, then pour it over the arrowroot.

  3. Stir in the yolks of the eggs and beat well.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 to 15 minutes and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 milk into a smooth, light custard as it heats.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard; whites are folded in to lighten the texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs set into.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are beaten stiff and folded in gently. Stirring or deflating them loses that air, so the pudding bakes up flat and dense instead of light.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, 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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