Skip to main content
Dessert

Sea Foam

A dessert made from soaked tapioca, sugar, butter, and beaten egg whites, served chilled with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sea Foam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water for four hours or overnight.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook the soaked tapioca in a farina kettle until clear, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add sugar and butter, then beat well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and pour into a dish to cool.

  4. Serve with cream; pineapple pairs nicely.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 as it cooks and turns clear, forming the pudding's body.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and an airy, foamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it hold its beaten, airy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the sea foam loses its light, airy texture.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes