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Dessert

Cream Tapioca Pudding

A sweet pudding made with tapioca, milk, eggs, sugar, and thick cream, topped with beaten egg whites and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cream Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. Put the soaked tapioca into a quart of boiling milk and boil for 30 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with 1 cup of sugar, then add 3 tablespoons of thick cream.

  2. Stir the mixture into the boiling tapioca and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites and gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding, sprinkle with coconut, and brown under the broiler for 5 minutes.

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. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

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

Tapioca
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and a soft, spoonable set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and cooks into a creamy pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set smoothly, adding richness and colour.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue that gives a light, browned topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, whipped into the whites, stabilises the meringue.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca in the boiling milk. Tapioca must simmer long enough for its starch granules to swell and soften fully; undercooked tapioca stays firm and gives a gritty texture. Keep the milk at a steady boil while stirring so it does not scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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