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Dessert

Tapioca Cream

A creamy dessert made from boiled tapioca, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and vanilla, topped with whipped egg whites and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the tapioca base

  1. Boil the tapioca in 1 quart of rich milk in a kettle of water for several hours.

  2. Once cooked, add the cold milk.

  3. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, butter, and salt.

  4. Cook the mixture just enough to set the eggs.

  5. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg white and vanilla.

  6. Pour the mixture into a glass dish.

Top and garnish

  1. When cool, beat the egg whites until stiff, sweeten, and add a little lemon juice.

  2. Cover the tapioca cream with spoonfuls of the beaten egg whites and garnish with bits of bright jelly.

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 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

Pearl tapioca
Swells during long simmering to thicken the milk into a creamy pudding body.
Rich milk
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in and gives the pudding its richness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base as they set on gentle heat and add richness.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff foam to create a light topping that adds airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard base and the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolk mixture just enough to set the eggs. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat but curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so the mixture should be cooked only until it thickens and is removed from heat promptly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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