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Dessert

Tapioca Blanc-mange

A sweet dessert of tapioca cooked in milk and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tapioca Blanc-mange

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. Heat the milk to boiling.

Make the blanc-mange

  1. Pour in the soaked tapioca and cook for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Pour into a mold or cups that have been wet with cold water.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Tapioca
Thickens the milk as it cooks, setting the pudding into a firm, sliceable gel.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and provides richness and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, creamy flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the soaked tapioca while stirring constantly. Tapioca starch can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring keeps it evenly dispersed and prevents lumps, while the starch swells and thickens as it heats.

“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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