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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A sweet custard-like dessert made from tapioca, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Tapioca Cream

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the tapioca until very soft.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and sweeten to taste.

  3. Boil the milk, then let it cool.

Make the cream

  1. Stir in the tapioca and flavoring.

  2. Beat the egg whites until very light and mix all together.

  3. Let it boil for ten minutes.

  4. Pour into molds.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk 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
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream its body.
Egg yolks
Enriches the cream and helps it set with richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Beaten to a light foam, they add airiness and lightness to the cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a cream.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until very light and mix all together.. Egg whites must be beaten to a light foam and folded in gently so the air is kept. Overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser cream.

“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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