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Dessert

Cream of Tapioca Pudding

A sweet, creamy pudding made from pearl tapioca, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream of Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the tapioca

  1. Boil the tapioca in water until the water is absorbed.

  2. Add the milk and cook until the tapioca is transparent.

  3. Stir in the sugar and salt, and boil for 5 to 10 minutes longer.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until creamy and add to the tapioca mixture.

  5. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes on low heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Pearl tapioca
Swells as it cooks and thickens the milk into a creamy, pudding-like texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in, adding richness and body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help thicken it when gently cooked.
Egg whites
Folded in at the end to lighten the pudding's texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolks on low heat. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can scramble or curdle if the heat is too high. Keeping the heat low and stirring helps the custard-like texture stay smooth.

“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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