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Tapioca Cream or French Custard

A custard made with tapioca, egg yolks, milk, and sugar, topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 or French Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight in enough water to cover it.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar.

  3. Drain the tapioca and mix it with the egg yolks and sugar mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan, then add the egg yolks, sugar, and tapioca mixture.

  2. Cook until the mixture thickens like custard, then add salt and flavoring.

Meringue and serve

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites with the sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Serve the custard cold, topped with the meringue.

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. 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 custard as it cooks and swells, giving it a soft, pudding-like body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk as they cook and add richness and a smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca and yolks thicken into custard.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the airy meringue topping.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, and tapioca needs enough heat to fully swell and thicken. Cook gently and stir constantly so the custard thickens smoothly without lumps or curdling.

“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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