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Dessert

Jelly Pudding

A pudding made from soaked tapioca, water, salt, sugar, and currant jelly, served with sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Jelly Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tapioca and soak it in the water overnight.

Cook and set

  1. In the morning, cook the soaked tapioca in a farina kettle until done.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and currant jelly, and mix well.

  3. Wet a mold and pour the pudding mixture into it when cold.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweetened cream.

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 + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Currant + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
Forms the pudding's body as its starch swells and thickens during cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currant jelly.
Currant jelly
Adds fruity tartness, flavour and colour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook the soaked tapioca until done. Tapioca grains must fully gelatinize and turn translucent; if undercooked they stay hard and chalky, and the pudding will not set smoothly once cooled.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe 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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