Why it works: Milk and egg 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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the tapioca in a little milk until soft.
Scald the milk in a double boiler.
Make the pudding
Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar to the milk.
Stir in the soaked tapioca.
Let the mixture thicken and cool.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Starch that swells and thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a pudding.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help set the custard as the mixture thickens.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and eggs.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolks to the hot milk. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot milk too quickly. Beating the yolks and adding them gradually with stirring keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.
“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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