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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A custard-like dessert made with tapioca, cream, egg yolks, milk, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. In a pan, combine the milk, lemon rind, sugar, and bay leaf, then bring to a boil.

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

  3. Remove the bay leaf and lemon rind, then let it cool slightly.

Finish the cream

  1. Whip the cream and carefully fold it into the mixture.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cook for 5 minutes without boiling.

Set and serve

  1. Dilute the red currant jelly with a little wine jelly and pour a thin layer into a border mold. Allow to set.

  2. Fill the mold with the cream mixture and let it set.

  3. Turn out the mold and fill the center with the cold stewed fruit 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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Red currant + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream its body and set.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and colour, helping the cream set softly.
Cream
Whipped and folded in to lighten the texture and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells and thickens in.
Red currant jelly
Forms a tart, glossy layer that sets on the bottom of the mold.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken and can curdle or scramble if overheated. Keeping the mixture below a boil lets the yolks set it smoothly and evenly.

Swap the red currant

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

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

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