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Dessert

Arrowroot Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

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

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 ↓

Arrowroot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot and sugar with 1 tablespoon of milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with the lemon rind; remove the rind once boiling.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the arrowroot mixture.

  4. When slightly cool, add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and mix thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently fold into the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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 + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 as it heats.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard; whites are whipped to lighten and puff the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to a stiff froth trap air that gives lift. Folding gently preserves those bubbles; vigorous stirring deflates them and leaves a dense pudding.

Swap the arrowroot

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

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

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