Skip to main content
Dessert

Tapioca Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with scalded milk, pearl tapioca, eggs, sugar, salt, and butter, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tapioca Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak tapioca one hour in cold water to cover.

  2. Drain the tapioca.

Make the custard

  1. Add the tapioca to the milk and cook in a double boiler for thirty minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs slightly.

  3. Add sugar and salt to the eggs.

  4. Pour the egg mixture gradually into the hot tapioca mixture.

Bake

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Add butter.

  3. Bake for thirty minutes in a slow oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

378Calories
14 gProtein
25 gFat
25 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. 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

Pearl tapioca
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Eggs
Set during gentle baking, adding richness and firmness to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and the eggs set into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory dairy flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture gradually into the hot tapioca mixture.. Adding the eggs slowly while stirring tempers them, so they blend in smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps in the hot mixture.

“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 →

You might also like

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