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Dessert

Pear Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of tapioca and Bartlett pears sweetened with sugar, served with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Pear Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Empty the can of Bartlett pears into a baking dish.

  4. Add the soaked tapioca and sugar to the pears.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the tapioca is transparent.

  2. Serve with sweet 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).

  2. Bartlett pear + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes
  3. Bartlett pear + creamtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the pear juices and gives the pudding a chewy, translucent texture as its starch gelatinizes.
Bartlett pears
Provide the fruit flavour and the juices that the tapioca thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Bake until the tapioca is transparent. Tapioca starch thickens only after its granules have hydrated and gelatinized with heat. Underbaked pudding stays cloudy and starchy, so bake until the grains look clear.

Swap the bartlett pear

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Bartlett pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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