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Dessert

Tapioca Meringue

A sweet pudding made from tapioca, milk, and eggs, topped with a custard and meringue.

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

Tapioca Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight and strain it.

  2. In a bowl, combine the soaked tapioca, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, and flavoring.

  3. Bake slowly until done.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, make a hard custard with the yolks of 3 eggs, corn starch, sugar, and milk.

  2. Pour the custard over the pudding.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and spread over the pudding.

  2. Bake in the oven for a few minutes until the meringue is set.

  3. Serve cold.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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
Its starch swells and thickens the pudding as it cooks, giving it body.
Eggs
Proteins set during baking, binding the pudding and firming the custard and meringue.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue hold its structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks with the tapioca and custard, adding richness.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue until just set. Beaten egg whites form a foam that sets with heat. Baking too long can make the meringue dry, tough, or weepy, so it should be removed once it is firm and set.

“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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