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Dessert

Arrowroot Blanc Mange

A sweet, firm dessert made from arrowroot, milk, sugar, and rose water, served with cream and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Arrowroot Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Rub the arrowroot into a paste with a little cold water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the boiling milk, arrowroot paste, sugar, and salt.

  3. Boil and stir the mixture for 8 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture into a wet mold and let it firm up.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Arrowroot + rosetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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
Starch that thickens the hot milk into a smooth, set pudding.
Milk
Forms the body of the pudding and adds richness and creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild flavour of the starch and milk.

The step that matters

Boil and stir the mixture for 8 minutes. Arrowroot must reach a boil and be stirred constantly so the starch swells evenly and thickens. Stopping early or leaving it unstirred can leave a thin or lumpy pudding that will not set firmly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, rose, cream. 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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