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 ↓
Tapioca Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the custard
Combine cold milk and tapioca in a pot; heat and stir until it boils.
Add powdered sugar and let it boil for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat and stir in butter and beaten eggs.
Bake or boil and serve
Pour the mixture into a buttered pie or pudding dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.
Alternatively, boil the pudding for 1½ hours, adding 2 eggs.
If boiled, let it stand for 15 minutes before serving.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and thickens as it heats.
- Tapioca
- Starch that thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its body.
- Eggs
- Set during cooking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like texture.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the pudding.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps it set with a softer texture.
The step that matters
Stir in the butter and beaten eggs off the heat. Adding eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them into lumps. Removing the pot from the heat first lets the eggs blend in smoothly and set evenly when baked or boiled.
“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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