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Dessert

Apple Tapioca

A baked dessert of apples topped with a tapioca mixture, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tapioca

  1. Mix tapioca, sugar, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Slowly stir the mixture into the boiling water and cook in a double boiler for 20 minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice to the tapioca mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Core and peel the apples, then fill the holes with sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Pour the tapioca mixture over the apples.

  3. Cover and bake until the apples are soft.

  4. Serve with cream and additional 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Granulated tapioca
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and a soft, spoonable texture.
Tart apples
Provide the main fruit flavor and soften during baking, becoming tender within the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor of the apples.

The step that matters

Slowly stir the tapioca into the boiling water. Adding the mixture gradually while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it does not clump. Cooking it gently in a double boiler lets the tapioca thicken evenly without scorching.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

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