Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Tapioca Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the pudding
Wash the tapioca and combine it with the milk in a pot.
Add the grated lemon rind, butter, and sugar to taste.
Boil the mixture for 1 hour.
Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.
Serve with sauce, or sugar and cream.
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 + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tapioca
- Its starch swells during cooking and thickens the milk into a creamy body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in and the custard sets from.
- Eggs
- Set when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a soft, custard-like firmness.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
- Lemon rind
- Contributes aromatic citrus oils that brighten the flavour of the pudding.
The step that matters
Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the mixture is very hot when they go in, they can scramble into small lumps. Beat them well and stir them through the mixture evenly so they combine smoothly and set into a uniform custard.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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