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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A pudding made with tapioca and apples, sweetened and baked until the apples are cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca and place it in the cold water.

  2. Cook slowly until clear, stirring often to prevent burning.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove from heat, sweeten, and pour the tapioca into a dish with the peeled and cored apples.

  2. Cover with a plate and bake slowly until the apples are cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold cream or a hard sauce spiced with cinnamon.

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

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

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

Tapioca
Thickens the cooking liquid into a clear, soft pudding as its starch gelatinizes.
Apples
Provide the fruit body of the dish, softening as they bake in the tapioca.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until clear. Tapioca thickens only as its starch gelatinizes with heat. Stirring often keeps the starch from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give a burnt taste and uneven texture.

“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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