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Dessert

Arrowroot Souffle

A light, airy dessert made from arrowroot, milk, sugar, and egg white, flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 cold milk.

  2. Add the mixture to hot milk and stir until thick.

  3. Cover and cook over hot water for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Add egg white and beat until well blended.

  2. Remove from heat, add vanilla, pour into moistened molds, chill, and serve with cream and sugar, custard sauce, or fresh or canned fruit.

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 milk into a smooth, set custard without making it cloudy or heavy.
Egg white
Beaten into the base to add lightness and a softer, airier texture.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid body of the souffle and carries the thickening starch.

The step that matters

Cooking the thickened base. Arrowroot thickens as it heats and must be stirred until it turns thick and glossy. Stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so lumps do not form, and the 15-minute covered cook over hot water sets the starch fully before the egg white is added.

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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