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Dessert

Peach Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding made with tapioca, peaches, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Peach Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak 1 pint of tapioca in cold water for 3 hours.

  2. Bring the soaked tapioca to a boil on the stove.

  3. Sweeten the tapioca with white sugar.

  4. Peel and slice ripe peaches to nearly fill a baking dish.

  5. Sprinkle white sugar over the peaches.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the tapioca over the peaches.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with cream and additional sugar.

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. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together721 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the juices and sets the pudding into a soft, spoonable custard as it cooks.
Ripe peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and moisture that the tapioca absorbs and thickens during baking.
White sugar
Sweetens the tapioca and peaches and draws juice out of the fruit.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, fatty contrast to the warm, sweet pudding.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca. Tapioca pearls must hydrate fully before cooking; unsoaked pearls stay hard and chalky, so the pudding will not set evenly during baking.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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