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Drink

Arrowroot Drink

A sweetened milk and arrowroot beverage flavored with lemon or lime peel, lime juice, and optional brandy and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Arrowroot Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the arrowroot

  1. Pour off the water from the arrowroot and stir in some pounded sugar.

  2. Boil the milk and gradually pour it over the arrowroot, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the lemon or lime peel and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Sweeten with sugar.

Flavour and set

  1. Add lime juice.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Steep lime peel in hot water with bitter almonds.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Mix with arrowroot, lime juice, and brandy.

  6. Heat until thick.

  7. Pour into a mold or jelly glasses.

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 + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lime + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, clear-setting jelly-like body as it heats.
Milk
Provides the creamy base and body of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lime and tartness.
Lime juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the milk over the arrowroot. Arrowroot clumps if hot liquid is added too fast or unstirred. Pouring gradually while stirring continuously lets starch granules disperse evenly before they swell and thicken.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, arrowroot, sugar, lemon, lime, brandy):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, arrowroot, sugar, lemon, lime, brandy. 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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