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Dessert

Cherry Tapioca with Cream

A sweet dessert of tapioca pearls cooked with cherries, lemon juice, and sugar, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cherry Tapioca with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight or according to package directions.

  2. Add the cherry juice and enough water to make a total of 1 pint.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until perfectly clear, adding water as needed.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Once done, add the pitted cherries, lemon juice, and sugar to taste. Stir well.

  2. Pour into a pudding dish.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve hot or cold with plain or whipped cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Thickens the cherry liquid into a clear, glossy pudding as it cooks.
Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and some moisture to the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet cherry flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding to taste.

The step that matters

Cook the tapioca until perfectly clear. Tapioca starch thickens as it heats and needs gentle, steady cooking in a double boiler with added water. Under-cooking leaves it cloudy and starchy, while scorching on direct heat can stick and burn it.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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