Skip to main content
Dessert

Tapioca Pudding, with Apples

A baked tapioca pudding with apples, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tapioca Pudding, with Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca once or twice and place it in a dish, covering it with cold water and adding a pinch of salt.

  2. Let it sit on the back of the stove for 2 hours to soften.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pare and quarter the apples, then place them in a shallow dish.

  2. Cover the apples with the softened tapioca.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the top is nicely browned.

Serve

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

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

  3. 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

Flake tapioca
Softens into a thick, starchy layer that sets the pudding's texture as it bakes.
Tart apples
Provide the fruit base, and their acidity balances the sweetness of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the tart flavour of the apples.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Browning the top in the oven. The top should be nicely browned, which depends on the oven being hot enough. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surface heat and sugars. Checking color by eye keeps the top from burning before the apples are cooked through.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes