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Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked apple dish with tapioca, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the tapioca

  1. Cook the tapioca in 1 pint of water until clear.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and sweeten to taste.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel the apples, core them, and fill the holes with sugar and a little cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the apples in a baking dish and pour the tapioca gently over them.

  2. Dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the apples are tender, about 1 hour.

  4. Serve cool with 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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Seed tapioca
Thickens the liquid as it cooks and gives the pudding its clear, soft, spoonable body.
Apples
Provide the main fruit body and soften during baking, becoming tender in the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the top and surfaces of the pudding as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the tapioca and fills the apple cores, balancing the tart fruit.

The step that matters

Cook the tapioca until clear. Tapioca starch must be fully cooked in water until it turns clear; undercooked starch stays cloudy and chalky and does not thicken the pudding properly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, butter, 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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