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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A baked dessert of apples and tapioca, sweetened with sugar, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tapioca Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sago or tapioca overnight in water.

  2. Peel the apples, remove the cores, and fill them with sugar, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the apples in a baking dish with a little water and bake until soft.

  2. Pour the soaked tapioca over the baked apples and bake for one hour.

  3. Serve with hard sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  5. 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

Sago or tapioca
Thickens as it cooks and gives the pudding its soft, chewy texture.
Apples
Provide the main fruit flavor and soften during baking to form the body of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the apples and cuts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring the soaked tapioca over the baked apples. Tapioca or sago must be fully soaked so it hydrates and cooks through. Otherwise the grains stay firm and the pudding will not thicken evenly during the hour-long bake.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, lemon. 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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