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Tapioca Cream

A sweet, vanilla-flavored dessert made from tapioca, milk, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 coarse tapioca overnight or fine tapioca for 20 to 30 minutes in cold water.

Cook the custard

  1. Place soaked tapioca in the upper part of a double boiler with milk and sugar. Cook for 1 hour.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg yolks. Return to the double boiler and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

  3. Add salt and vanilla.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Egg + sugartop 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
Starch that thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream its body.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the cream when heated, and whites are folded in for lightness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca swells in and thickens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the tapioca during cooking.

The step that matters

Returning the mixture to the double boiler. Egg yolks can scramble if heated too quickly. Tempering them with hot mixture first, then cooking gently over simmering water, keeps the cream smooth and 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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