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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked dessert of tart apples filled with butter, sugar, and tapioca, flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare and core the tart apples.

  3. Fill the openings of each apple with butter and sugar.

Bake

  1. In a pan, add 2 teaspoons of dry tapioca and 2 teaspoons of sugar for each apple.

  2. Place the apples in the pan and sprinkle ground cinnamon over them.

  3. Fill the pan nearly full of water and bake until the apples are tender.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Tart apples
Provide the main body and tart flavor that the pudding is built around.
Dry tapioca
Thickens the cooking liquid as it bakes, giving the pudding its creamy, set texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the apple flesh.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps the apples brown slightly as they bake.

The step that matters

Fill the pan nearly full of water and bake until the apples are tender. Tapioca only thickens when it is fully hydrated and heated long enough for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. Baking too briefly leaves the pudding thin or grainy, so the apples should be tested for tenderness and the tapioca should look clear and soft before removing the pan.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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