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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, arrowroot, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Arrowroot Pudding

Why it works: Arrowroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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

  1. Mix ½ cup new milk with ½ cup arrowroot.

  2. Boil the remaining milk and stir into the arrowroot mixture.

  3. When nearly cold, add the well-beaten yolks of 4 eggs, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 2 ounces broken fresh butter.

  4. Season with grated nutmeg and mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a buttered dish at 350°F (175°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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, set custard as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool before adding the yolks. Adding beaten yolks to very hot milk can scramble them, leaving specks instead of a smooth custard. Waiting until nearly cold keeps the yolks silky.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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