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Dessert

Tapioca-pudding with Cocoa-nut

A sweet pudding made from tapioca, milk, eggs, sugar, and cocoa-nut, topped with whipped egg whites and cocoa-nut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Tapioca-pudding with Cocoa-nut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the water.

  3. Pour 1 quart of boiling milk over the tapioca.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg yolks with 1 cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of grated cocoa-nut.

  2. Add the mixture to the boiling milk.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes longer.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with ½ cup of white sugar.

  2. Spread the froth over the top of the pudding.

  3. Sprinkle thickly with grated cocoa-nut.

  4. Bake until light brown.

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 + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

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 to thicken the milk into a pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook in the hot milk, giving body and richness.
Egg whites
Beaten into a stiff froth, they form a light topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and the custard is built on.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the meringue-style topping, and helps the froth hold its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the yolk mixture to the boiling milk. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they hit very hot liquid too abruptly. Stirring the mixture in steadily and keeping the milk at a gentle boil helps the yolks thicken smoothly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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

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