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
Soak the tapioca
Cover the tapioca with cold water.
Let it stand for 3 hours or overnight.
Make the custard
Stir the soaked tapioca into the boiling milk.
Add the egg yolks, sugar, and salt.
Stir until it thickens into a custard.
Bake and serve
Pour the custard into a pudding dish.
Top with a frosting made from the beaten egg whites.
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
- Soaked starch that thickens the milk as it cooks into a pudding.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the tapioca.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help it set into a creamy texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and balances the richness of the eggs and milk.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into the frosting that browns on top in the oven.
The step that matters
Stir the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats, so it should be stirred steadily and kept at a gentle heat until 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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