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Dessert

English Tapioca Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the pudding

  1. Put the soaked tapioca in a double boiler and surround it with lukewarm water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until soft throughout.

  3. Add the creamed butter and sugar, then the eggs, followed by the tapioca, and finally the fruit.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a buttered dish and bake for 1 hour.

  2. Serve hot with 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. 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

Tapioca
Swells in milk and cooks into a soft, thick body for the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the tapioca and forms the liquid base that sets with the eggs.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until soft throughout. Tapioca grains must fully hydrate and soften before the eggs are added. Undercooked grains stay firm and grainy, and the pudding will not reach a smooth, uniform texture during baking.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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