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Dessert

Cherry Tapioca

A sweet dessert made from tapioca pearls and cherries, simmered with water and sugar, served chilled with whipped 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 ↓

Cherry Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. In the morning, pit the cherries.

Make the pudding

  1. Combine the cherry juice, 1 pint of water, and soaked tapioca in a pot.

  2. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Add sugar to taste.

  4. Stir in the cherries.

  5. Cook for a little longer.

Chill and serve

  1. Cool in the refrigerator.

  2. Serve with whipped 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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Its starch thickens the liquid as it cooks and sets the pudding as it cools.
Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor, tartness, and juice that colors and sweetens the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cherries.

The step that matters

Cooking the soaked tapioca. Tapioca starch only thickens fully when heated in liquid. Pearls that are not cooked through stay opaque and chewy, and the pudding will not set evenly as it cools.

“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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