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Dessert

Pudding, Fruit Tapioca

A sweet pudding made from soaked tapioca, sugar, bananas, apples, oranges, currants, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pudding, Fruit Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tapioca

  1. Cover the soaked tapioca with water in a double boiler.

  2. Cook until the tapioca is large and transparent.

Add the fruit and finish

  1. Add sugar and chopped fruit.

  2. Cook until the apples are soft.

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. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Its starch swells and thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tart fruit.
Bananas
Break down as they cook, adding soft texture and mild sweetness.
Apple
Softens during cooking, adding tender pieces and a little acidity.
Orange
Adds bright acidity and aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook until the tapioca is large and transparent. Tapioca starch must be heated fully to swell and turn clear. If it is undercooked, it stays opaque and chalky, and the pudding will have a gritty, unset texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, banana, apple, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, apple, orange. 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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