Skip to main content
Dessert

A Delicious Dessert

A dessert of tapioca, pineapple, lemon, sugar, egg whites, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A Delicious Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight in plenty of cold water.

  2. In the morning, drain most of the water and cook the tapioca until clear.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the grated pineapple, lemon juice, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, either plain or whipped.

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. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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
Swells and turns clear as it cooks, giving the pudding its thick, chewy body.
Eggs
Egg whites add structure and help thicken and set the mixture as it boils.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the pineapple and lemon.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until clear. Tapioca must be fully cooked through, because under-cooked starch stays opaque and firm and gives a gritty texture. Soaking first shortens cooking and helps the grains hydrate evenly.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes