Skip to main content
Dessert

Tapioca Cake, with Apple Jelly

A steamed tapioca cake made with milk, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and orange flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tapioca Cake, with Apple Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in 3 cups of milk for 1-2 hours.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the remaining milk and butter until warm.

  3. Add the soaked tapioca to the warm milk mixture.

  4. Stir in the sugar, salt, and orange flavoring.

Bake and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks (or whole eggs) and gradually mix in the tapioca mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  3. Steam the pudding until set, about 30-40 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells in milk and sets into a tender, chewy body as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Coagulate on heating to set the pudding and add richness and structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that tapioca absorbs and softens in, adding creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Beating the yolks into the tapioca mixture. Adding the hot tapioca mixture to the eggs too quickly can scramble them. Mixing in gradually, a little at a time, tempers the eggs so they blend smoothly and set evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes