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375 Tapioca Custard

A custard made from sweet milk, tapioca, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

375 Tapioca Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of water for several hours or overnight.

  2. Heat the milk nearly to boiling in a saucepan, then add the soaked tapioca with the soaking water.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture is about to boil, then remove from heat.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks, mix in the sugar, and gradually stir in the hot milk and tapioca mixture.

  2. Return to the kettle and cook for 5 minutes, stirring until the custard thickens.

  3. Remove from heat, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, and fold them into the custard.

Cool and serve

  1. Pour the custard into a bowl and let it cool before serving.

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

Tapioca
Swells in liquid and thickens the milk into a creamy, pudding-like body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the custard, while whites folded in stiff peaks lighten its texture.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens and the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the set texture of the eggs.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring the hot milk into the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding it slowly while stirring warms the yolks gently so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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