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Dessert

Lemon Tapioca Pudding

A pudding made from soaked tapioca, lemon juice, rind, sugar, and eggs, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 2 cups of water overnight.

  2. In the morning, add 1 cup of water to the soaked tapioca.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, and beaten egg yolks to the tapioca mixture.

  2. Cook until the tapioca is clear, about 30 minutes.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pudding and bake until lightly browned.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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
Thickens the liquid as it cooks and turns clear, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help thicken the pudding for a creamy texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms a light topping which browns in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and gives the pudding its flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until clear. Tapioca thickens only when its starch granules swell and gelatinise with heat. Stopping early leaves a starchy, cloudy texture, while cooking too long can make the pudding gluey as it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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