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Arrowroot

A simple sweet pudding made by thickening milk or water with arrowroot and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot smoothly with a little cold milk.

  2. Boil the remainder of the milk and pour it on, stirring briskly.

  3. Return to the saucepan and boil for about 5 minutes, stirring continuously.

  4. Add the sugar and serve.

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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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).

Sugar and milk 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
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and gelatinises when heated, giving the pudding its set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens, providing creamy body and flavour.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and is stirred in at the end, after thickening.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while the mixture boils. Arrowroot starch can clump and scorch on the base of the pan if left still. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly and smoothly as it gelatinises.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk. 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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