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Dessert

Cassava Pudding

Cassava pudding made with milk, cassava, coconut, eggs, butter, sugar, and vanilla, finished with a folded egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cassava Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, cassava, egg yolks, coconut, salt, butter, sugar, and vanilla.

  2. Cook the mixture in a basin on top of the stove or in a frying pan, stirring constantly for a few moments.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold in the powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding and brown slightly in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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. Coconut + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Cassava + coconuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Coconut + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cassava
Thickens the milk into a soft, set pudding body as it cooks.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and help set the pudding; whipped whites form a light topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the cassava thickens and the eggs set.
Coconut
Adds moisture, richness and a distinct coconut flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the pudding while it cooks. Cassava and egg-thickened mixtures can scorch or lump on the bottom of the pan if left still, so constant stirring keeps the heat even and the texture smooth.

Swap the cassava

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cassavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, coconut, butter, walnut, sugar, vanilla. 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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