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Dessert

Manioca Cream

A custard-like dessert made from soaked manioca, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Manioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Soak the manioca in water until soft.

  2. Boil the milk.

  3. While boiling, stir in the soaked manioca and the beaten egg yolks mixed with sugar.

  4. Cook until sufficiently thick.

  5. Pour into a dish to cool.

  6. Once cool, add vanilla.

Top with meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Sweeten and flavor the egg whites.

  3. Fold part of the beaten whites into the cream.

  4. Place the remaining beaten whites on top.

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

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

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 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).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Manioca
Soaked and cooked, it thickens the milk into a smooth, set cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the manioca thickens into the cream.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the cream with custard-like body; whites are beaten to form a light topping.

The step that matters

Cook until sufficiently thick. Manioca needs to cook fully while stirred so it thickens evenly and does not stick or stay grainy. Under-cooked starch leaves the cream thin and gritty, while the cream sets as it cools.

“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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