Skip to main content
Main

Tapioca Soup

A clear soup made with tapioca, egg yolk, butter, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tapioca Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring water to a boil.

  2. Sprinkle in tapioca, salt, and pepper; boil until clear.

Finish in the tureen

  1. In a tureen, beat the egg yolk.

  2. Add butter and cream to the egg yolk.

  3. Slowly pour the soup into the tureen, stirring constantly to avoid curdling the egg.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it cooks, turning it clear and giving it body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the soup and adds richness and body when combined with the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded flavor to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the soup into the tureen, stirring constantly. Pouring hot soup too quickly into the beaten egg yolk can scramble it, causing curdling. Adding the hot liquid gradually while stirring gently warms the yolk so it blends smoothly into the soup.

“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 soup recipes

Creamy 6Tomato 3 See all 56 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes