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Arrowroot Pudding

A sweet pudding made with arrowroot, milk, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Arrowroot Pudding

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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot with ½ cup of milk to form a cream.

  2. Boil ½ pint of milk.

  3. Pour the boiled milk over the arrowroot mixture while stirring continuously.

  4. Add sugar and the grated rind of ½ lemon.

  5. Once cool, gently stir in the beaten egg yolk.

  6. Fold in the whipped egg white.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, glossy pudding base.
Egg yolk
Enriches the pudding and adds richness and body as it sets.
Egg white
Whipped to a froth, it lightens the mixture and helps it rise and set airy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg white. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white. Stirring hard would deflate the froth, leaving a denser pudding that rises less in the oven.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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