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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked tapioca, cold water, sugar, salt, and fruit jelly.

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

Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tapioca Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, cook the soaked tapioca in a double saucepan for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, add the sugar, salt, and jelly, mixing thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

  3. Serve with cream and caster sugar.

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. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Its starch thickens and sets the pudding into a soft, spoonable texture as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tart fruit flavour of the jelly.
Red currant jelly
Adds fruit flavour, colour and sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the tapioca while it cooks. Tapioca starch can settle, stick and scorch on the base of the pan. Frequent stirring over the gentle heat of a double saucepan keeps it smooth and evenly thickened, without lumps or burnt spots.

“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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