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Tapioca Cream Custard

A custard made with tapioca, milk, sugar, eggs, and salt, chilled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

Make the custard

  1. In a pot, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in the soaked tapioca and salt, and cook until thickened.

  3. Add the sugar and beaten egg yolks, stirring quickly.

  4. Pour the mixture into a dish and gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in the refrigerator or ice chest 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.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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
Soaked tapioca thickens the hot milk as its starch gelatinizes during cooking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and provides richness and body for the custard.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as they thicken with heat.
Egg whites
Folded in gently at the end to lighten the texture of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the smooth texture of the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca in the milk until thickened. Tapioca starch must be fully cooked and gelatinized to thicken properly; undercooked starch leaves a grainy or thin custard. Stirring keeps the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

“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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