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Arrowroot Pudding

A sweet pudding made from arrowroot, milk, sugar, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Arrowroot Pudding

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk until warm.

  2. In a bowl, mix arrowroot with a little cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the warm milk to the arrowroot mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, vanilla, and salt.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish and let cool before serving.

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 + 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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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, glossy pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its flavour balance.

The step that matters

Stirring the arrowroot into the warm milk. Starch clumps if it meets hot liquid without being fully dispersed first. Mixing it into a smooth paste with cold milk, then adding warm milk gradually while stirring, keeps the starch evenly suspended so it thickens smoothly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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