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Dessert

Tapioca-pudding

A baked apple dessert with tapioca, sugar, and optional lemon, vanilla or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,501 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare and core the apples, then place them in a buttered dish.

  3. In a bowl, pour 1 quart of boiling water over ½ cup of tapioca or sago and let it stand for 1 hour.

Bake

  1. Add 2 cups of sugar and a little lemon, vanilla, or wine to the tapioca mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture over the apples and bake for 1 hour.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 or sago
Thickens the liquid as it swells and turns the mixture gel-like and pudding-textured.
Apples
Provide the fruit base, softening as they bake under the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the tapioca stand in boiling water. Tapioca starch must be fully hydrated to thicken properly. Standing in hot water for the full hour lets the pearls swell and soften, so they cook evenly and give a smooth, non-grainy texture in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, vanilla, wine, butter. 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.

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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