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Drink

Arrowroot Water

A lemon or lime flavored arrowroot drink made by boiling peel, adding arrowroot, sweetening, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the peel of half a lemon or lime in 1 quart of water.

  2. Pour the boiling water over 1 tablespoon of washed arrowroot and stir well.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Sweeten with sugar and bring to another boil.

  2. Squeeze in a little lime juice and let it cool.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 water as it heats, giving a light body and a glossy, clear texture.
Lemon or lime peel
Releases citrus oils into the hot water, adding aroma and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the citrus.
Lime juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the arrowroot into the boiling water. Arrowroot starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring it well while it is in the water disperses the granules so they thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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