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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked tapioca, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and flavored with lemon, nutmeg, or rose extract.

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

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.

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Pick over the tapioca and soak it overnight in half of the milk.

  2. If short on time, soak the tapioca in cold water (twice as much water as tapioca) for 2–3 hours.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the soaked tapioca in the remaining milk, stirring often, and set the saucepan in a kettle of hot water.

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Stir the egg mixture and all other ingredients into the hot milk mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (175 °C) for about 45 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Eggs
Bind the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Tapioca
Thickens the milk and gives the pudding its chewy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Butter
Adds richness and keeps the baking dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Boiling the soaked tapioca in the milk. Tapioca must be fully cooked and thickened before the eggs go in. Stirring often prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, and the hot water bath keeps the milk gently warm and even.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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