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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A sweet, creamy pudding made from tapioca, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla, and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tapioca Pudding

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. Combine soaked tapioca, milk, butter, and salt in a pot.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolk mixture to the boiling tapioca.

  3. Cook until thickened.

  4. Stir in vanilla.

  5. Let the pudding cool.

Finish

  1. Top the cooled pudding with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Swells during soaking and cooking to thicken the milk into a pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the pudding as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds body to the egg yolk mixture.
Egg whites
Beaten and spooned on top to give a light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the boiling tapioca. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Whisking a little hot tapioca into the yolks first, or adding them while stirring steadily, helps them blend smoothly and thicken the pudding evenly.

“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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