Skip to main content
Dessert

Tapioca Cake

A baked cake made with tapioca, cream, milk, eggs, and optional dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tapioca Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the tapioca base

  1. Boil the cream and milk with sugar and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Add the lemon peel or preferred flavoring.

  3. Stir in the tapioca and simmer over low heat until cooked.

  4. Add the butter and beaten egg yolks, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pie dish or cake tin.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently pour over the mixture.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  4. For a cake, coat a mold with clarified butter and bread crumbs, mix in dried cherries and currants, and follow the same baking instructions.

  5. Once done, invert the mold onto a dish and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while whipped whites lighten and set the cake structure.
Tapioca
Starch that thickens the cream and milk as it cooks, giving the cake its body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a softer, creamier texture to the set cake.
Milk
Provides liquid that the tapioca hydrates and cooks in, forming the base custard.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites trap air that expands in the oven and gives the cake lift. Under-beaten whites stay dense, and over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy and may collapse.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, sugar, lemon, butter, egg, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, lemon, butter, egg, bread. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes