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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding, Boiled

A boiled pudding made from tapioca, milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks, and beaten whites, flavored with citrus rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca and soak it in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the soaked tapioca, butter, sugar, and lemon or orange rind.

  3. Bring to a boil, then stir over low heat for 15 minutes.

Set the pudding

  1. Remove from heat, discard the rind, and let the tapioca cool.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks and beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and boil or steam until set.

  4. Let it stand in the mold for a few minutes before turning it out carefully.

Serve

  1. Sift powdered sugar over the pudding and serve with cream.

  2. Garnish with bright-colored jelly or jam if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells in hot milk and thickens the custard as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set firm when heated, adding richness.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add lightness and help the pudding set with an airy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca softens and thickens in.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and beaten egg whites after the tapioca cools. Adding eggs to very hot tapioca can scramble them and make the pudding grainy. Letting it cool first lets the eggs blend smoothly and keeps the set texture even.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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