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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of apples filled with sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel, topped with a tapioca, butter, milk, and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca and salt in the water for several hours in a warm place, but do not cook.

  2. Peel the apples, remove the cores, and fill them with sugar mixed with grated nutmeg and lemon peel.

  3. Place the filled apples in a pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Mix the soaked tapioca with melted butter, cold milk, and sugar, then pour it over the apples.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sauce or enjoy cool with sugar and cream.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 milky liquid into a soft, pudding-like set.
Tart apples
Provide the fruit base and a sharp acidity that balances the sweet custard.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the pudding base.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples and custard brown lightly as they bake.

The step that matters

Soak the tapioca without cooking it. Tapioca must hydrate fully over several hours in warm conditions so it softens and thickens properly in the oven. Skipping or shortening the soak can leave the pudding grainy or unevenly set.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

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