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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked dessert of tapioca and apples sweetened with sugar and spices, served with sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in lukewarm water for 4 hours.

  2. Pare and slice the apples.

  3. Add sugar and spice to the apples to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the apple mixture over the soaked tapioca.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sugar and cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Coffee + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together215 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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
Starch that swells in liquid and thickens the pudding as it bakes.
Apples
Soften as they bake, releasing juices that moisten and flavor the tapioca.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances the tart fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Soak the tapioca for the full 4 hours. Dry tapioca pearls need time to absorb water before baking. Fully hydrated pearls cook evenly and thicken the pudding, while under-soaked pearls can stay hard and chalky.

Swap the apple

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

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

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