Skip to main content
Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A sweet dessert made by cooking soaked tapioca with milk, egg yolks, and flavoring, topped with frothy beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tapioca Cream

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 cup of milk or water overnight.

  2. In the morning, boil 1 quart of milk.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs and mix them into the soaked tapioca.

  2. Sweeten and flavor the mixture to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and cook until it thickens like custard.

  4. Pour the custard into cups.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until frothy.

  2. Pour the frothy egg whites over the tops of the custard.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream its body and smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream and gives it richness and body as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a creamy, thick texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light, frothy topping over the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and cook until it thickens like custard. Tapioca starch needs to reach a boil and be stirred while cooking to gelatinize and thicken evenly. Undercooked starch stays grainy and thin, and the egg yolks can scramble if the heat is too high.

“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 cream recipes

Soup 33Pudding 6 See all 98 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes