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 Custard
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tapioca
Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of milk overnight.
Make the custard
In the morning, add 4 tablespoons of sugar and the yolks of 4 eggs to the soaked tapioca.
Stir this mixture into 1 quart of boiling milk.
Cook until it thickens.
Add flavoring to taste.
Finish and serve
Before serving, beat the egg whites and stir them into the custard.
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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Sugar + eggtop 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 during soaking and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the custard its body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens and the egg yolks enrich.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks.
- Egg whites
- Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and airiness to the finished custard.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the flavor of the custard.
The step that matters
Cook until it thickens. Tapioca starch only thickens fully when it is heated enough to swell and gelatinize. Stopping too early leaves the custard thin, while overcooking can make it stiff or scorch on the bottom of the pan.
“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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