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Dessert

Rhubarb and Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of layered rhubarb, raisins, and pearl tapioca, sweetened with sugar and dotted with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and raisin work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb and 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.

Prepare

  1. Wash the tapioca and soak it in lukewarm water for 4 hours until it absorbs all the water.

  2. Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with sliced rhubarb.

Layer

  1. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar over the rhubarb.

  2. Scatter 1 teaspoon of chopped raisins on top of the rhubarb.

  3. Add half of the soaked tapioca on top of the raisins.

  4. Dot with butter and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  5. Layer more rhubarb, raisins, and sugar, then add the remaining tapioca.

  6. Dot with butter and sprinkle with the last tablespoon of sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour until browned.

  2. Serve hot with hard or liquid sauce.

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. Rhubarb + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Raisin + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pearl tapioca
Swells during soaking and sets into a tender, jelly-like texture as the pudding bakes.
Rhubarb
Provides tart acidity that balances the sugar and gives the pudding its fruit flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the rhubarb and tapioca brown lightly on top.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca. Pearl tapioca must absorb its water fully before baking; otherwise the grains stay hard and the pudding will not set evenly as it bakes.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, butter. 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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