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 ↓
Cherry Tapioca
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tapioca
Wash the tapioca well and soak it in cold water overnight.
Simmer the soaked tapioca in 1 pint of boiling water until perfectly clear.
Add the cherries
Stone the sour cherries.
Stir the cherries into the boiling tapioca.
Sweeten to taste.
Chill and serve
Pour the mixture into a serving dish.
Refrigerate until very cold.
Serve with sugar and cream.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tapioca
- Thickens the liquid as it cooks and turns it clear and glossy.
- Sour cherries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness that balances the sweetness.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dish and balances the tartness of the cherries.
The step that matters
Simmer the tapioca until perfectly clear. Tapioca starch must be fully cooked to lose its raw, chalky taste and to thicken properly. Stopping early leaves the pearls opaque and the texture grainy. Cooking until the pearls turn clear shows the starch has gelatinized.
“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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