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Tatioca Cream

A custard-like dessert made from soaked tapioca, milk, egg yolks, and whipped egg whites, flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Tatioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak tapioca in water for four hours, then drain the water.

Make the custard

  1. Heat milk in a pot until it boils.

  2. Stir in egg yolks and a little salt.

  3. Continue stirring until it begins to thicken.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. Whip egg whites to make frosting.

  2. Flavor frosting with vanilla extract.

  3. Spread frosting over the top.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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
Its starch swells and thickens the milk as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens and gives the cream its body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the cream as their proteins set with heat.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the frosting a light, airy structure.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and flavor to the frosting.

The step that matters

Keep stirring until the cream thickens. Tapioca starch and egg yolks can scorch on the hot bottom of the pot or form lumps if the mixture sits still. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the cream thickens smoothly.

“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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