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Dessert

Tapioca and Grape Juice Pudding

A pudding made with tapioca, grape juice, water, sugar, lemon juice, salt, and folded egg whites, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tapioca and Grape Juice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in the water for 15 minutes.

  2. In a chafing dish, combine the soaked tapioca and sugar.

Cook

  1. Heat until hot, then add the grape juice.

  2. Cook until the tapioca is transparent.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and salt.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold with plain cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Minute tapioca
Thickens the juice as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and gel-like texture.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped, they add lightness and an airy, foamy texture to the pudding.
Grape juice
Provides the main liquid, flavour and colour of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the juice and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and offsets the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until the tapioca is transparent. Tapioca thickens only when its starch granules swell and become clear during cooking. Stopping early leaves the pudding thin and chalky-tasting, so it must be cooked fully before the other ingredients are added.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Grapethe original

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