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Tapioca Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with tapioca, milk, onions, cloves, butter, pepper, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in 1 pint of milk for 2 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, bring the remaining 2 pints of milk to a boil with the cloves, onions, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir in the soaked tapioca and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve and add the 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells as it cooks, thickening the milk into a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens and that carries the other flavours.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Onions
Release their sugars and aroma into the milk as it simmers, building savoury flavour.
Cream
Added at the end to enrich the texture and add smoothness.

The step that matters

Cooking the soaked tapioca in the milk. Tapioca must simmer long enough for its starch to fully swell and soften; undercooked pearls stay firm and gritty, and stirring prevents them from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, onion, butter, pepper, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, butter, pepper, 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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