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 the tapioca
Cover the tapioca with water and let it stand overnight.
In the morning, pour off the water and add the tapioca to the milk in a pot over medium heat.
Make the pudding
When it boils, stir in the egg yolks, sugar, and salt until it begins to thicken.
Top and brown
Make a frosting with the egg whites.
Spread the frosting on top.
Sprinkle with sugar.
Brown in the oven.
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
- Swells in milk and thickens the pudding as it cooks.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help it thicken as it heats.
- Egg whites
- Whip into a frosting that sets and browns on top.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps the frosting brown.
The step that matters
Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to very hot milk without care. Stirring steadily while the pudding thickens keeps the custard smooth.
“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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