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Dessert

Arrowroot

A sweet dish made from arrowroot, milk or water, sugar, spices, and lemon juice or wine, served as cakes, biscuits, or puddings.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil arrowroot with milk or water.

  2. Add sugar, spices, and lemon juice or wine to taste.

  3. For young children, use a little carraway or cinnamon water.

Serve

  1. Serve as cakes, biscuits, or puddings.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 liquid into a smooth, soft set when boiled.
Milk or water
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavour.
Lemon juice or wine
Adds acidity and bright flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil arrowroot with milk or water. Arrowroot thickens only once the starch granules swell in heated liquid. Stirring while it boils keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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