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Tapioca Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with sugar until smooth.

Make the pudding

  1. In a pot, combine the soaked tapioca and milk with salt, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the egg yolk mixture to the boiling tapioca and milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Finish

  1. Let the mixture cool, then beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the pudding.

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
Swells during soaking and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens into a creamy pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the pudding further and add richness when stirred into the hot mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps smooth the beaten egg yolks.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in, they lighten the pudding's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the boiling tapioca. Stirring constantly keeps the yolks from scrambling on contact with hot liquid, so the pudding thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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