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Dessert

Caramel Tapioca

A sweet custard made with milk, eggs, tapioca, and caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tapioca base

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Stir in the tapioca until thick.

Make the caramel and custard

  1. Melt ⅓ cup of sugar until light brown.

  2. Carefully pour the melted sugar into the milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar.

  4. Pour the milk mixture over the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Return the mixture to the double boiler and cook for 1 minute.

  6. Remove from heat and add salt and vanilla.

Finish and top

  1. Make a meringue with the egg whites and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the custard.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 thickens into a creamy pudding.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Minute tapioca
Starch that thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, melted, forms the caramel flavor.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the custard flavor.

The step that matters

Pouring the melted sugar into the milk. Hot caramel poured into cold milk can seize into hard lumps or threads. Pouring carefully and stirring lets it dissolve back into the milk smoothly.

“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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