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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A custard made with tapioca, milk, eggs, sugar, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream

Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water overnight.

  2. Warm the milk in a saucepan.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the warm milk with a pinch of salt.

  3. Add the soaked tapioca and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

Finish and cool

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the custard.

  2. Flavor with lemon or vanilla and let cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 milk as it cooks, giving the cream its body and pudding-like texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and smooth body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy texture to the finished cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and the custard is built on.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds to its soft, tender set.

The step that matters

Bringing the tapioca to a boil. Soaked tapioca thickens as its starch granules swell and gelatinize in hot liquid. Stir it constantly so it does not scorch on the bottom, and cook until it turns clear and the mixture thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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.

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