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Dessert

Apple and Peach Tapioca

A dessert of tapioca cooked with apples and optional peaches, sweetened with sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple and Peach Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca.

  2. Pour boiling water over the tapioca.

  3. Cook the tapioca in a double boiler until transparent, about 1 hour, stirring often to prevent lumps.

  4. Add salt to the tapioca.

Prepare the apples

  1. Core and peel the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a buttered pudding dish.

  3. Fill the apple cores with sugar, a little lemon juice, and cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the tapioca over the apples.

  2. Bake until the apples are soft.

  3. Serve hot or cold with foamy sauce or sugar and cream.

  4. Peel the peaches, cut them in halves, and cook them in the same way as the apples.

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 + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

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

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Tapioca
Thickens the liquid into a clear, translucent pudding as it cooks.
Tart apples
Provide the main fruit body and acidity that balances the sweet tapioca.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling inside the apples and balances their tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until transparent. Tapioca must cook long enough for its starch granules to swell and turn clear; stirring often keeps the starch dispersed so lumps do not form.

Swap the peach

The recipe marks peach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, lemon, cinnamon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon, cinnamon. 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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