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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A chilled dessert made from tapioca, milk, cream, and fruit jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tapioca base

  1. Combine milk, bay leaf, lemon rind, and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the tapioca. Cook gently for about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the bay leaf and lemon rind. Let it cool slightly.

Assemble the cream

  1. Whip the cream. Fold the whipped cream into the tapioca mixture.

  2. Dilute the red currant jelly with a little wine jelly. Layer the diluted jelly at the bottom of a border mold.

  3. Place the mold on ice to set. Fill the mold with the prepared cream mixture. Allow it to set in a cool place.

Unmold and serve

  1. Unmold the dessert. Fill the center with fruit compote 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.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Crushed tapioca
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream its body and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells and thickens in.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help enrich the cream's texture.
Cream
Whipped and folded in to add lightness and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and balances the tart lemon and jelly.
Red currant jelly
Adds tart fruit flavour and a glossy layer at the base.

The step that matters

Cook the tapioca gently. Tapioca thickens as its starch swells in hot liquid. Boiling hard or scorching the milk can burn the bottom and cause uneven thickening, so keep the heat low and stir.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, milk, cream, sugar. 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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