Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Tapioca Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tapioca
Soak the tapioca in cold water overnight.
Make the cream
Boil the milk in a saucepan, then add the soaked tapioca and let it boil.
Beat the egg yolks with the crushed sugar, then add to the boiling mixture and stir until thick like custard.
Pour the mixture into a dish and let it cool.
Top and serve
Beat the egg whites until stiff, then mix in the sugar and spread over the cooled tapioca cream.
Brown lightly under a broiler and serve cold.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Swells during soaking and boiling, thickening the milk into a creamy body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a cream.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the hot mixture into a custard-like texture and add richness.
- Crushed sugar
- Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the warm mixture.
- Egg whites
- Whip into a stiff foam that forms the light topping which browns under the broiler.
The step that matters
Stirring the egg yolks into the boiling mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if added to very hot liquid without stirring constantly. Stirring steadily while the mixture thickens keeps it smooth and custard-like.
“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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