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Steamed Arrow Root Pudding

A steamed pudding made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, sugar, and flavouring, baked in a buttered basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Arrow Root Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a few spoonfuls of cold milk until smooth.

  2. Stir in the remaining milk.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and flavouring.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin.

  2. Tie the basin securely.

  3. Steam for 1 hour with the saucepan lid closed tightly.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk mixture so it sets into a soft, smooth pudding.
Eggs
Add structure as they set, and richness to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its moisture and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Steam with the lid closed tightly. Steam keeps the pudding moist and cooks the eggs and thickener evenly. If steam escapes, the pudding can dry out at the edges and set unevenly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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