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Dessert

Peach Tapioca

A dessert of cooked tapioca with peaches, sweetened and served cold with cream.

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

Peach Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in water until well soaked.

  2. Pour boiling water over the tapioca.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

  4. Keep the mixture hot on the stove.

  5. In a saucepan, melt a heaping tablespoon of granulated sugar until browned to make caramel.

  6. Pour the dissolved tapioca into the caramel.

  7. Stir the mixture until smooth and colored.

Add the peaches and chill

  1. Peel and slice the peaches.

  2. Sweeten the peaches.

  3. Pour the sweetened peaches over the tapioca mixture.

  4. Flavor the mixture to taste.

  5. Chill in the refrigerator.

  6. Serve very cold with cream.

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. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Peach + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together721 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells in boiling water and thickens the mixture as it cooks.
Peaches
Provide the main fruit flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Granulated sugar
Caramelized to add color and a deeper, toasted sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until smooth and colored. Tapioca dissolved in the hot caramel must be stirred evenly so it does not clump or form lumps. Stirring also distributes the caramel color through the mixture for an even appearance.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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