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Tapioca Cream

A sweet pudding made from milk, eggs, tapioca, sugar, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight in cold water.

Cook the pudding

  1. Bring the milk to a boil and add the soaked tapioca, draining off the water first.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, sugar, and salt, then boil for 2 more minutes.

  4. Stir in the vanilla.

Finish and bake

  1. When cool, fold in the beaten egg whites with the remaining sugar.

  2. Pour into a pudding dish and brown in the oven.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 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).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, and beaten whites lighten the texture.
Tapioca
Its starch swells in the hot milk and thickens the pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in and becomes the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown in the oven.
Vanilla
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble or curdle if they get too hot too fast. Stirring constantly while the mixture boils for the stated 2 minutes helps it set smooth.

“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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