Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Tapioca Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the tapioca in 1 cup of milk overnight.
The next morning, cook the soaked tapioca and milk until soft.
Add the yolks of 3 eggs and 1 cup of sugar to the tapioca mixture.
Make the pudding
In a separate pot, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.
Stir in the tapioca mixture.
Cook until it thickens.
Remove from heat.
Stir in the beaten egg whites and any desired flavoring.
Serve
Pour into a mold and let it cool, or serve hot.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Tapioca
- Swells during soaking and cooking to thicken the milk into a pudding.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help thicken it as it cooks.
- Egg whites
- Beaten stiff and folded in off the heat, they lighten the pudding's texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the pudding.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks into a creamy pudding.
The step that matters
Cook until it thickens. Tapioca starch must be cooked long enough to swell fully and thicken the milk; undercooked starch leaves the pudding thin and grainy-textured. Stirring keeps the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pot.
“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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