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Dessert

English Tapioca Pudding

A sweet pudding made from tapioca, eggs, milk, sugar, raisins, lemon peel, and butter.

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 ↓

English Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Pour the soaked tapioca into a pot surrounded by warm water and bring to a boil, stirring slightly.

  3. Once soft, remove from heat and let cool.

Make the custard

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk until scalding.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix with sugar and butter until creamy.

  3. Pour the hot milk over the egg mixture and combine with the cooled tapioca.

  4. Add the lemon peel and raisins, dredging the fruit lightly with flour.

  5. Mix everything well and pour into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour, covered initially.

  2. Serve warm, dusted with powdered sugar.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and set during baking to give it structure.
Tapioca
Thickens the milk as its starch swells, giving the pudding body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the custard texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and combining it with the eggs. Pouring hot milk into beaten eggs gradually, while mixing, warms the eggs gently; if added too fast the eggs can scramble, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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