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Dessert

English Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding made from tapioca, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, raisins, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

English Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Pour the soaked tapioca into a jar and set it in a pot of warm water; bring to a boil.

  3. Once the tapioca is soft throughout, let it cool slightly.

Mix and bake

  1. Beat the eggs lightly and rub the butter and sugar together.

  2. Mix the tapioca with the egg mixture, adding the fruit last.

  3. Bake in a buttered dish for 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the milk as it softens, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and add richness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the tapioca absorbs and softens in, forming the custard base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the tapioca soften fully before mixing. Tapioca starch only thickens and turns translucent once fully hydrated and cooked through. Mixing in eggs before it is soft throughout can leave firm, uneven grains and a thin, unset texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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