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Breakfast

Tapioca Breakfast Cakes

A breakfast cake made from soaked tapioca, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Tapioca Breakfast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. In the morning, cook the soaked tapioca gently until all lumps are dissolved.

Make and fry the batter

  1. Add the milk, beaten eggs, salt, and baking powder to the tapioca mixture.

  2. Sift in the flour just before frying on the griddle.

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 + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Coffee + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Thickens as its starch swells and sets, giving the cakes a chewy body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set on the griddle.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to give the cakes lift.
Flour
Adds starch and protein that help the cakes hold their shape.

The step that matters

Cooking the soaked tapioca gently until all lumps are dissolved. Tapioca starch swells and thickens with heat, and cooking it slowly lets the granules hydrate evenly. High heat can scorch the bottom of the pan or leave lumps where the starch cooks unevenly.

“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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