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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A sweet, creamy dessert made from soaked tapioca, milk, eggs, and sugar, chilled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream

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 ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. Drain the tapioca in the morning.

Make the pudding

  1. In a double boiler, combine the milk, beaten egg yolks, sugar, salt, and flavoring.

  2. Heat until boiling, then add the beaten and sweetened egg whites.

  3. Let it sit undisturbed for a few minutes, then stir and transfer to a dish.

  4. Serve cold.

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. 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. Egg + sugartop 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

Tapioca
Swells during soaking and thickens the pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca and eggs set into a custard.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they cook.
Egg whites
Whipped into the hot mixture to add lightness and airy texture.

“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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