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Dessert

Apple Tapioca

A baked apple dessert with tapioca, sugar, lemon rind, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water to cover for 1 hour, then drain.

  2. Add boiling water to the tapioca and season with salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Core and peel the apples, then place them in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Fill the cavities of the apples with sugar and lemon rind.

  3. Pour the tapioca mixture over the apples and bake at 300°F (150°C) until the apples are tender.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Pearl tapioca
Starch that thickens as it cooks, giving the dish a soft, set texture.
Sour apples
Provide the main fruit body and a tart flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the apples.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the apples.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are tender. Tapioca starch thickens only as it cooks through in the oven, and the apples soften as their cell walls break down with heat. Stopping early leaves the apples firm and the tapioca thin.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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