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Dessert

Cream Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, tapioca, eggs, and sugar, topped with jam or meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Soak the tapioca in the milk for 1 hour, or until transparent.

  3. Remove from the stove.

  4. Add the beaten yolks and sugar.

Bake and top

  1. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Top with jam or jelly.

  3. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites and adding powdered sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  5. Brown the meringue in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with lemon sauce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and sets into a creamy pudding.
Tapioca
Thickens the milk as it softens, giving the pudding its body and slightly chewy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, rich texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar to form a stable meringue that browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the custard keep a tender texture.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Beaten egg whites with sugar can weep or collapse if overbaked, and browning needs watching. The meringue should be spread so it touches the edges, which keeps it from shrinking away from the dish while it toasts.

“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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