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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A sweet custard-like dessert made from pearl tapioca, milk, egg, sugar, salt, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream

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 ↓

Tapioca Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tapioca

  1. Pick over the tapioca and place it in the top part of a double boiler.

  2. Cover with boiling water.

  3. Once the water is absorbed, add the milk and cook until the tapioca is soft and clear.

Make the custard

  1. Separate the egg.

  2. Beat the yolk and mix in the salt and sugar.

  3. Pour this mixture into the hot milk while stirring.

  4. Cook until thickened like soft custard.

  5. Beat the egg white until stiff and fold it into the mixture.

  6. Let it cool and then add the vanilla.

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 + 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

Tapioca
Swells and turns clear and soft as it cooks, giving the cream its body.
Egg yolk
Thickens the custard as it cooks and enriches the texture.
Egg white
Beaten until stiff and folded in, it lightens the cream's texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in and the custard is built on.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens the flavour of the egg.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. The yolk must be stirred into hot milk gradually and cooked gently; heating too fast can curdle the egg, while stopping too early leaves the custard thin.

“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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