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Dessert

Cream Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, tapioca, eggs, and sugar, topped with jam or meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cream 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.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Soak the tapioca in the milk for 1 hour or until transparent.

  3. Remove from the stove; add the beaten yolks and sugar.

Bake and top

  1. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Top with jam or jelly and a meringue made from the egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Brown the meringue in the oven.

  4. Serve with lemon sauce.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and sets into a creamy pudding.
Tapioca
Swells as it soaks and thickens the milk, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, tender pudding.
Egg whites
Whip into a meringue that gives a light, browned topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay stable and brown.

The step that matters

Soak the tapioca until transparent. Tapioca must hydrate fully in the warm milk to swell and turn clear; undersoaked starch stays grainy and gives a chalky texture in the finished pudding.

“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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