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Dessert

Tapioca Cream Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked tapioca, milk, eggs, and corn starch, finished with a browned egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream Pudding

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the soaked tapioca.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Dissolve 1 tablespoon of corn-starch in ½ cup of milk.

  5. Add the beaten yolks of 4 eggs to the corn-starch mixture.

  6. Stir the mixture into the tapioca.

  7. Add a little salt and sweeten to taste.

  8. Boil once more.

  9. Add flavoring to taste.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the whites of 4 eggs with 2 tablespoons of sugar and flavor.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding.

  3. Brown lightly in the oven.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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
Swells as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and thicken it as they set with heat.
Egg whites
Beaten into a foam, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the pudding holds its shape.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks and softens in.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Tapioca settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot if left unstirred, and it needs steady heat to fully soften and thicken the milk.

“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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