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Dessert

Arrowroot Ice

A chilled dessert made from arrowroot, water, lemon juice, peel, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the arrowroot with cold water.

  2. Slowly pour the boiling water over the arrowroot mixture.

  3. Add the lemon juice and shredded lemon peel.

Freeze

  1. Stir well and freeze.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 liquid into a smooth, glossy base as it heats and sets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice and softens its texture by lowering the freezing point.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the boiling water over the arrowroot mixture. Pouring slowly while stirring keeps arrowroot from clumping into lumps. Starch granules need to disperse evenly before heat thickens them, so a smooth base freezes evenly.

“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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