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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A sweet custard made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, and sugar, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Arrowroot Pudding

Why it works: Arrowroot and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix 2 teaspoons of arrowroot with a little milk in a bowl until smooth.

  2. In an enamelled saucepan, heat the remaining milk and sweeten it with caster or crushed loaf sugar to taste.

  3. Bring the milk to a boil, then pour it over the arrowroot paste, stirring continuously.

  4. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add them to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour everything into a buttered dish and bake for 10 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 milk into a smooth, set custard as it heats.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites lighten the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens and the eggs set.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk onto the arrowroot paste. Arrowroot thickens when heated in liquid, so stirring constantly while pouring prevents lumps and keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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