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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A sweet dessert made by cooking milk, tapioca, and sugar, then folding in eggs and serving over canned peaches.

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

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 ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tapioca cream

  1. In a double boiler, cook the milk, tapioca, and sugar for about 10 minutes.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and a pinch of salt.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cool, pour the mixture over the cut canned peaches.

  2. Serve with whipped cream if desired.

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

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

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, folded in stiffly beaten, add lightness.
Minute tapioca
Starch that thickens the milk mixture as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens its flavour against the fruit.
Canned peaches
Provide fruit flavour and moisture under the cooled cream.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot mixture. Hot tapioca mixture can scramble egg yolks if they go in too quickly. Stirring a little hot liquid into the beaten yolks first, then combining, keeps the custard smooth. Folding in stiffly beaten whites last preserves the airy texture.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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

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