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Dessert

Tapioca Blanc-mange

A sweet dessert of tapioca cooked in milk and sugar, flavored and chilled, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca well before soaking.

  2. Soak the tapioca in cold water for 4 hours.

Cook the pudding

  1. Stir the soaked tapioca into the boiling milk.

  2. Add sugar and boil slowly for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat, add flavoring, and pour into molds.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill and serve cold with 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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Its starch swells and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the blanc-mange its set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens, supplying body and richness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the flavour of the milk and tapioca.

The step that matters

Stirring while the tapioca boils. Tapioca starch settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly, and the milk can catch and taste burnt. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly.

“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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