Skip to main content
Dessert

Polka Pudding

A sweet pudding made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, butter, rose water, lemon essence, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Polka Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the arrowroot in the cold milk.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the butter, rose water, essence of lemon or ratafia, and sugar.

Cook

  1. Boil 2 pints of milk in a double boiler.

  2. When boiling, stir in the other ingredients without taking it off the heat.

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

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

  3. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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, glossy custard without clouding it.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture into the boiling milk. Arrowroot thickens when heated and eggs can scramble if the mixture overheats or is left unstirred. Keeping the pot stirring and on the heat helps the custard thicken smoothly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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

You might also like

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