Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Tapioca

A dessert made with strawberries, tapioca, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites, served hot or cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Strawberry Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine hulled strawberries, sugar, salt, and lemon juice in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Once hot, stir in the tapioca and cook until transparent.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold with cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon 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

Fine tapioca
Thickens the pudding as its starch swells and gelatinizes during cooking.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and an airy, soft texture.
Hulled strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and moisture that the pudding is built around.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the strawberries and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the tapioca until transparent. Tapioca starch must be fully cooked until it turns clear. Under-cooked tapioca stays chalky and grainy, and it will not reach a smooth, thick texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes