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 ↓
A Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tapioca
Soak the tapioca in water overnight.
Drain the water and place the tapioca in a quart of milk with salt and butter.
Boil until the mixture thickens.
Finish the pudding
Beat the egg yolks and stir them in just before removing from heat.
Add the sugar and beat the egg whites to a froth.
Fold the egg whites into the mixture immediately after removing from heat.
Flavor to taste.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Swells during soaking and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a pudding.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken and enrich the pudding as they cook gently in the hot mixture.
- Egg whites
- Beaten to a froth and folded in, they lighten the pudding's texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding.
The step that matters
Stir in the egg yolks just before removing from heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble if the mixture is too hot or boils after they are added, leaving a grainy texture. Adding them at the end, off the boil, keeps the custard smooth.
“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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