Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Tapioca Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the milk mixture from the stove.

  4. Add the beaten yolks and sugar to the mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Make a meringue with the egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the top of the pudding.

  4. Brown the meringue in the oven.

  5. Serve with lemon sauce, or cover with jam or jelly.

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 softens in and becomes the pudding's body.
Tapioca
Swells as it soaks and thickens the milk, giving the pudding its chewy, soft texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard, adding richness and a smooth set.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens its flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar to form a meringue that browns on top.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten yolks to the hot mixture. Hot liquid can scramble egg yolks if added too quickly. Removing the milk from the stove first lowers the temperature, so the yolks thicken the custard smoothly instead of curdling.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes