Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Arrowroot along with all the Arrowroot containing recipes presented on this site, with 33 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

It may well surprise you to see arrowroot presented here in a list of spices. But arrowroot really is a spice, in that it's made from the rhizome (rootstock) of a plant. In fact arrowroot is a fine starchy powder derived from the West Indian arrowroot plant Maranta arundinacea (also known as obedience plant) that's typically used as a thickener for food. Maranta arundinacea itself is a tall (up to 2m perennial plant of the genus Marata that's native to rainforest habitats of the New World.

Archaeological studies in the Americas (particularly the Caribbean) show that cultivation of arrowroot began as early as 7000 years before present. Indeed, it was the native Arawak peoples of the Caribbean who first introduced arrowroot to European settlers. They called it Aru Aru (literally 'food of foods') and it formed a staple part of this diet. It is possible that Arrowroot is an English corruption of Aru Aru. An alternative explanation for the plant's name is that the Arawak used it to draw-out the poison from wounds caused by poison arrows.

Arrowroot rhizomes contain 23% of arrowroot starch and the isolation of the purified starch is quite a labour-intensive process. This includes: washing, peeling (removing the paper-like 'scales' of the tuber), soaking, before they are reduced to a pulp by beating them in mortars or subjecting them to the action of the wheel-rasp. The milky liquid obtained by this laborious process is passed through a coarse cloth or hair sieve and the pure low-protein mucilaginous starch allowed to settle at the bottom as an insoluble powder. This powder, dried in the sun or in drying houses, is the "arrowroot" of commerce and it is at once packed for market in air-tight cans, packages or cases.

In cooking it should always be used as a slurry (where dry arrowroot is mixed at a 1:1 ratio with cold water) before being tipped into and mixed with the food to be thickened. As a rule of thumb, to thicken 300ml of sauce (gravy or custard, for example) you will need 2 tbsp arrowroot (mix this with 2 tbsp cold water to get a slurry). If you are making a glaze then you will need just 1 tbsp arrowroot in 1 tbsp cold water per 300ml of the glaze.

While only Maranta arundinacea is considered true arrowroot, the common name for the herb is often applied to a variety of starches. These include other species of Maranta, such as Maranta ramosissima, Maranta allouya, Maranta nobilis, as well as Brazilian arrowroot (Manihot utilissima or Manihot palmate), Tahitian arrowroot (Tacca oceanica), and East Indian arrowroot (Curcuma augustifolia). This is why you can buy arrowroot at a range of prices. True arrowroot derived from Maranta arundinacea, because of the complexity of the extraction process, tends to be more expensive than the other types and is the product referred to in this article. Indeed, much of what is sold today as 'arrowroot' is, in fact, cassava flour. Unfortunately this does not have the same gelling and nutritional properties as true arrowroot. If what you're buying looks to cheap then it's not real arrowroot.