Skip to main content
Dessert

Quince Tapioca Pudding

A pudding made with tapioca, quince, milk, sugar, butter, and eggs, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Quince Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water until soft.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the soaked tapioca in the milk, stirring constantly for 10-15 minutes until dissolved.

  2. Add the sugar and butter.

  3. Beat the eggs and stir them in until set.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the tapioca and chopped quinces in a pudding pan.

  2. Finish with a layer of tapioca on top.

  3. Place the pan in a larger pan with boiling water and bake for 20 minutes.

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. Butter + eggtop 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. Quince + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the milk as it cooks and sets into a soft, creamy body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Milk
Cooks with the tapioca to form the creamy base of the pudding.
Quinces
Add fruit flavor and a tender, slightly tart note between the tapioca layers.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the quinces.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in gently and bake in a water bath. Eggs set when heated gently; adding them to very hot tapioca can scramble them, and a water bath moderates the oven heat so the custard sets evenly without curdling or drying out.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Quincethe original

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

You might also like

Quince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes