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Tapioca Cream

A sweet custard made with tapioca, milk, eggs, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream

Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight in ½ cup of milk.

  2. In the morning, add the remaining milk to the soaked tapioca in a tin pail.

Make the custard

  1. Place the pail in boiling water.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and enough sugar to sweeten.

  3. Flavor the mixture with lemon or vanilla.

  4. Cook the mixture like boiled custard.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

  2. Pour the froth over the custard.

  3. Set the custard in the oven.

  4. Brown the custard lightly.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 in the milk and thickens the custard as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a creamy custard.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the custard; whites whip into a light topping that sets and browns.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the beaten egg whites hold a stiff froth.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture like boiled custard. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Cooking gently in the boiling water bath and stirring keeps the custard smooth while the tapioca thickens it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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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