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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of tapioca, apples, sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon 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 4 cups of water over medium heat until it thickens.

Add the apples and bake

  1. Add the quartered apples, sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, salt, and butter.

  2. Mix well and transfer to a baking dish.

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

Serve

  1. Serve warm with rich 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  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

Tapioca
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and a soft, creamy texture.
Apples
Provide the fruit flavor and tender pieces that soften during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel to the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the tapioca until it thickens. Tapioca starch must be fully cooked in liquid to gelatinize and thicken. Stopping too early leaves the pudding thin and starchy-tasting, so cook until the mixture visibly thickens before adding the other ingredients.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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