Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Tapioca Pudding

A sweet orange‑flavored tapioca pudding baked with a whipped egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of water overnight.

  2. Add 1 quart of boiling water to the soaked tapioca.

  3. Cook the mixture until it thickens like starch.

Add the orange

  1. Stir in 1 cup of sugar and the juice and grated rind of 3 oranges.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the tapioca.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that sets and browns on top of the pudding.
Oranges
Add acidity and aroma through their juice and grated rind.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay stable and brown.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites need to be beaten until they hold firm peaks, since the foam sets and browns the topping. Under-beaten whites collapse and weep.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes