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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked dessert of apples and tapioca, finished 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 enough apples to fill a dish.

  2. Place a bit of lemon peel inside each apple.

  3. Soak ½ cup of tapioca in 1 quart of lukewarm water for 1 hour.

  4. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and lemon flavoring to the soaked tapioca.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the tapioca mixture over the apples.

  2. Bake until the apples are tender.

  3. 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

Tapioca
Swells in liquid as it soaks and sets into a thickened, spoonable pudding texture.
Apples
Soften during baking and become the tender fruit base of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow mouthfeel to the cold pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.

The step that matters

Soak the tapioca for a full hour. Dry tapioca pearls need time to absorb water and swell fully. Under-soaked pearls stay firm and chalky, so the pudding will not thicken evenly.

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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