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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of apples and tapioca, flavored with lemon and served cold with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples, placing a bit of lemon peel inside each apple.

  2. Soak the tapioca in lukewarm water for 1 hour.

  3. Add salt and lemon flavoring to the soaked tapioca.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the tapioca mixture over the apples.

  2. Bake until the apples are tender.

Serve

  1. 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

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

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

Apples
Provide the fruit base that softens during baking and gives the pudding its body.
Tapioca
Thickens as it hydrates and sets the pudding into a soft, creamy texture.
Lemon peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma that flavors the apples as they bake.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel that balances the tart fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca for a full hour. Tapioca pearls must fully hydrate before baking. Under-soaked pearls stay firm and chalky, while fully hydrated starch swells evenly and thickens the mixture into a smooth pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cream, sugar. 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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