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Dessert

Apple and Peach Tapioca

A dessert of cooked tapioca served with apples and 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 and pour boiling water over it.

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

  3. Add salt to the tapioca.

Prepare the apples

  1. Core and peel the apples, placing them in a buttered pudding dish.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the tapioca over the apples and bake until the apples are soft.

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

  3. For peaches, peel, cut in halves, and cook in the same way.

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 as it cooks and turns clear, giving the dish its custard-like body.
Tart apples
Provide the main fruit, holding their shape while softening in the oven and adding acidity.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the apple cores and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until transparent. Tapioca must cook long enough for its starch granules to swell fully and clear; stirring often prevents lumps forming as the starch thickens and sticks to the pan.

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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