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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A sweet pudding made from tapioca, sugar, butter, egg whites, and boiling water, served over fruit with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tapioca Pudding

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine tapioca and boiling water in a double boiler.

  2. Keep the water boiling and cook until the tapioca is clear, about 1 hour, adding more boiling water as needed.

  3. Once clear, add sugar, butter, a pinch of salt, and beaten egg whites, stirring to combine.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over diced pineapple or other fruit, stirring to mix.

  2. Let cool and serve with 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.

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.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + pineappletop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Thickens the liquid as it cooks and turns clear, giving the pudding its body.
Egg whites
Add structure and body to the pudding once stirred in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until clear. Tapioca must cook long enough for its starch to fully gelatinize and turn clear; undercooked tapioca stays cloudy and chewy. Keeping the water boiling and adding more as it evaporates keeps the cooking even.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, 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.

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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