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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A sweet, creamy dessert made from tapioca, milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and served with ladyfingers and optional whipped cream.

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

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight in just enough water to cover it.

  2. In the morning, boil the milk with the soaked tapioca in a double boiler.

  3. Add the sugar and a little salt.

  4. Beat the egg yolks thoroughly.

  5. Stir the beaten egg yolks into the mixture after it has boiled for ten minutes.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Stir rapidly for five minutes.

  8. Flavor with vanilla.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line a dish with ladyfingers.

  2. Pour in the tapioca cream.

  3. Top with beaten egg whites or whipped cream.

  4. Sift sugar over the top.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 cooking to thicken the milk into a pudding texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a creamy custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and add richness and body as they cook into the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten egg yolks into the hot mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if added to very hot liquid without enough stirring. Adding them after the tapioca has cooked and stirring constantly keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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