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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of apples, tapioca, sugar, and water, served nearly cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon 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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the tapioca

  1. Pour cold water over the tapioca and warm it on the stove, stirring occasionally.

  2. Heat the tapioca for two hours until soft and almost clear, stirring often.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the apples in a pudding dish, filling their centers with sugar and squeezing lemon juice over them.

  2. Pour the tapioca over the apples.

  3. Place the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven inside a dripping pan with boiling water, and bake covered for one hour or until the apples are done.

Serve

  1. Serve nearly cold.

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 + lemontop 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. Sugar + lemontop 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

Tapioca
Thickens as it cooks and softens into a clear, pudding-like body.
Apples
Provide the fruit base and soften during baking to become tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and the tapioca, balancing the tart fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the tart apples.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until soft and almost clear. Tapioca starch must be fully hydrated and heated to gelatinize; if undercooked it stays opaque and grainy, so it should be stirred often to prevent sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. 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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