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Dessert

Stewed Tapioca and Apples

A sweet stew of tapioca and apples flavored with lemon, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Tapioca and Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak 2 tablespoons of tapioca in 1 pint of water for 12 hours (overnight).

  2. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

  3. In a saucepan, combine 3 tablespoons of sugar and ½ pint of cold water; heat and stir until it thickens into syrup.

  4. Peel the lemon thinly, avoiding the white part.

Make the stew

  1. Add the soaked tapioca, syrup, lemon peel, and cloves to a large saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture, stirring until it boils, ensuring nothing sticks to the bottom.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes until the tapioca is clear.

  4. Add the apples, arranging them at the bottom to be covered by the tapioca.

  5. Move the saucepan to the side of the heat and let the apples stew gently for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on their size.

  6. Do not boil further to prevent the apples from breaking.

  7. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the apples and stir carefully.

  8. Once the apples are tender, remove them from the saucepan.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. 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

Tapioca
Thickens the liquid as it cooks and turns clear, giving the stew its body.
Apples
Provide the main fruit body and sweet, tender texture after gentle stewing.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour of the apples.

The step that matters

Stew the apples gently without boiling. Vigorous boiling breaks down the apple pieces into mush, so they must simmer gently until just tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, clove, 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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