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Arrowroot Souffle

A light, sweet puff made from arrowroot, sugar, milk, egg white, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix arrowroot, sugar, and salt with a little cold milk.

  2. Gradually add this mixture to the hot milk, stirring until thick.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the egg white beaten until stiff.

  2. Turn into a moistened mold and let cool.

  3. Serve with cream and sugar or custard sauce.

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 + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 hot milk into a smooth, set base as it cooks.
Egg white
Beaten until stiff, it traps air to give the souffle its light, airy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a custard-like mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white beaten until stiff. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white. Stirring or deflating it loses volume, leaving a dense rather than light souffle.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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