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Dessert

Tapioca Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with tapioca, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 375°F (190°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Sift the dust from the tapioca, and soak it in 4 cups of milk for 2 hours in a warm place.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the remaining 4 cups of milk with the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Add the soaked tapioca to the boiling milk and cook gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the tapioca mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 375°F (190°C) until just set in the middle.

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

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and gelatinizes during cooking, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and the custard sets from.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the custard tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and softer texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, creamy texture when baked.
Whole eggs
Add structure and help the pudding set when baked.

The step that matters

Baking until just set in the middle. Eggs continue to set as the pudding cools, so overbaking can make the custard grainy, dry or curdled. Pull it while the center still has a slight wobble.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg. 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.

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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