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Dessert

Cherry Tapioca

A chilled dessert made from tapioca, cherries, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,301 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cherry Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Place tapioca in the upper part of a double boiler; add sugar, salt, and boiling water.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes; remove from heat.

  3. Add cherry juice, lemon juice, and cherries.

  4. Turn into a serving dish.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cream and sugar.

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. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Minute tapioca
Thickens the cooking liquid into a soft, translucent pudding as it cooks.
Canned cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and soft texture in the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the cherry and lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and cherry flavor.

The step that matters

Cook for 15 minutes over the double boiler. Tapioca thickens only when its starch gelatinizes in hot liquid. Undercooked tapioca stays grainy and loose, while the gentle indirect heat of a double boiler helps prevent scorching on the bottom.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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