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Apple Tapioca Pudding— Nice

A baked pudding of tapioca and apples, sweetened with sugar and nutmeg, served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding— Nice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water for several hours.

  2. Mix the soaked tapioca with sugar and nutmeg.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the apples in a buttered dish and pour the tapioca mixture over them.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

  3. Serve cold with cream and sugar.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 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
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding a soft, set texture.
Apples
Provide the fruit base, softening as they bake beneath the tapioca.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca. Tapioca needs several hours in cold water to hydrate before baking. Unsoaked pearls stay hard and chalky, so the pudding will not thicken evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

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