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Dessert

Tapioca Blanc Mange

A sweet dessert made from tapioca cooked in milk, sweetened, set, and served with jam and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,130 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tapioca Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in milk for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Boil the tapioca in the milk until tender.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and sweeten to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

  2. Once cold, turn it out and serve with jam and 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. Milk + strawberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Strawberry + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Strawberry + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Its starch swells and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid the tapioca swells in, and its proteins and sugars add richness and a creamy flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the tapioca in the milk until tender. Tapioca starch swells as it heats and can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan. Stirring while it cooks keeps the starch evenly suspended and prevents sticking, so the pudding turns out smooth rather than lumpy or burnt.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, strawberry, 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.

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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