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Dessert

Arrow-root Cream

A sweet cream made with arrowroot, milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, and sugar, served chilled with preserved fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Arrow-root Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the arrowroot base

  1. Mix the arrow-root with cold water and let it settle.

  2. Pour off the water.

Make the cream

  1. Sweeten and boil the milk with the lemon peel and cinnamon.

  2. Remove the lemon peel and cinnamon.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the arrow-root.

  4. Stir well and frequently until it cools.

Serve

  1. Serve in a glass or china dish, topped with grated nutmeg if desired.

  2. Enjoy with preserved fruit or fruit tarts.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Arrow-root
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream a smooth, set body.
Milk
Forms the main body of the cream and carries the flavour of the lemon and cinnamon.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the arrow-root. Arrowroot thickens when heated in liquid and then sets as it cools. Pouring the milk in while it is boiling lets the starch swell evenly. Stirring well and frequently while it cools keeps the starch from clumping and forming a skin.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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