Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and nutmeg, baked until set.

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

Why it works: Arrowroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix arrowroot with 1 tablespoon milk until smooth.

  2. Boil remaining milk in saucepan.

  3. Pour boiled milk over arrowroot mixture, stirring quickly until thickened.

  4. Separate egg whites from yolks.

  5. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks.

  6. Stir in yolks one at a time.

  7. Add sugar.

  8. Fold in whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small pie dish with butter.

  2. Pour mixture into dish.

  3. Sprinkle nutmeg on top.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 gels.
Eggs
Add richness and structure; whipped whites lighten the pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a custard.
Butter
Greases the dish and adds richness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in whipped egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that gives lift; folding gently rather than stirring keeps that air from collapsing before baking.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes