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Dessert

Tapioca Cream Pudding

A sweet, creamy pudding made from soaked tapioca, milk, eggs, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tapioca Cream Pudding

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the soaked tapioca and boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Dissolve 1 tablespoon of cornstarch in ½ cup of milk, then add the beaten yolks of 4 eggs.

  4. Stir this mixture into the tapioca, add a little salt, and sweeten to taste.

  5. Bring to a boil once more and add flavoring to taste.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the whites of 4 eggs with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and lightly brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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 as it cooks, thickening the milk into a soft, creamy pudding body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in, adding richness and creaminess.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard base, helping it set smoothly alongside the tapioca.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the pudding, adding richness and a smooth custard texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the tapioca while it boils. Tapioca settles and scorches on the bottom of the pot if left unstirred, and constant stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed as it thickens.

“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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