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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

A sweet milk dessert made with arrowroot, milk, sugar, cinnamon, lime peel, and peach-leaf water or almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the arrowroot

  1. Mix cold water with arrowroot and let it settle for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour off the water and add peach-leaf water or almond essence and sugar.

Make the blanc-mange

  1. Sweeten the milk and boil it with cinnamon and lime peel.

  2. Strain the mixture through a napkin onto the arrowroot, stirring constantly.

  3. Simmer the mixture on the fire.

  4. Pour it into a mold and refrigerate overnight before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cinnamon + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

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

  4. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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-like texture as it cooks and cools.
New milk
Forms the body of the dessert and carries the flavourings.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture onto the arrowroot, stirring constantly. Arrowroot starch can clump into lumps if added to hot liquid without constant stirring. Stirring while the mixture goes in keeps the starch evenly dispersed, so the final blanc-mange sets smooth.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, peach, sugar, milk, cinnamon. 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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