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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Puddixg

A dessert of apples baked with a tapioca and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Puddixg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Pick over and wash the tapioca.

  2. Add the boiling water, salt, and sugar to the tapioca.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until transparent.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Slice the apples and sweeten if desired.

  3. Place the apples in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the tapioca mixture with lemon juice over the apples.

  2. Bake until the apples are thoroughly cooked.

  3. Serve plain, with sugar and cream, or with whipped 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. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 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

Pearl tapioca
Thickens the liquid into a soft, translucent pudding as it cooks.
Apples
Provide the main body and tender texture once baked through.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tart lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the pudding and apples.

The step that matters

Cook the tapioca until transparent. Tapioca pearls must fully hydrate and gelatinize in the boiling water to thicken properly. Stopping early leaves a chalky, grainy texture and an unset pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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