Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the arrowroot and sugar with 1 tablespoon of milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with the lemon rind, then remove the rind.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the arrowroot mixture.

  4. When slightly cool, add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and mix thoroughly.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently fold into the mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

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. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, set custard without clouding it.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the custard; whites are whipped to lighten and puff the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the custard tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped to a stiff froth trap air that makes the pudding rise. Folding gently preserves that air; stirring or deflating the mixture results in a flat, dense pudding.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

More arrowroot pudding recipes

Lemon 3 See all 190 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes