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Dessert

Arrowroot Souffle

A sweet custard-like dessert made from arrowroot, milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

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

  2. Boil the remaining milk and pour it over the arrowroot, stirring briskly.

  3. Return to the saucepan, add the sugar, vanilla essence, and salt, and cook until the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan.

Finish and bake

  1. Cool slightly, then beat in each egg yolk separately.

  2. Gently fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 25 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.

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. Egg + milktop 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 base when cooked.
Eggs
Enrich the base and, as whipped whites, lighten the mixture for a risen texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps give a tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites should be stiffly whisked and folded gently so the air bubbles stay intact; overmixing deflates them and the souffle rises less during baking.

Swap the arrowroot

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