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Lemon Tapioca Pudding

A sweet, lemon-flavored tapioca pudding served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Lemon Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

Make the lemon mixture

  1. Mix the juice of the lemons with 1 pint of water.

  2. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

  3. Combine the lemonade with the soaked tapioca.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture until clear, adding more water if too thick.

  2. Peel the lemons thinly.

  3. Cut the lemon peel into straws.

  4. Boil the lemon peel straws until tender.

  5. Drain the lemon peel.

  6. Add the drained lemon peel to the tapioca mixture when nearly done.

  7. Serve cold with cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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

Tapioca
Swells during soaking and cooking, thickening the mixture and giving it a clear, jelly-like texture.
Lemons
Juice provides sharp acidity and bright flavour; peel adds aromatic citrus notes.
Cream
Adds richness and cooling fat that softens the tart lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until clear. Tapioca starch only thickens and turns clear once fully cooked. Stopping early leaves a cloudy, starchy texture, so the mixture must simmer until the grains are translucent.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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