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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of apples, tapioca, butter, and milk, served cold with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca and salt in the water for 2 hours in a warm place.

  2. Peel the apples, remove the cores, and fill them with sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  3. Place the filled apples in a pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Mix the soaked tapioca with melted butter and a little cold milk, then pour it over the apples.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve cold with cream and sugar.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells in water and thickens into a soft, spoonable pudding as it cooks.
Tart apples
Provide the fruit base and a tangy flavour that balances the sugar.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the tapioca mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and softens their tartness.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca. Tapioca pearls must fully hydrate before baking; under-soaked pearls stay hard and chalky, while the starch gelatinises and sets the pudding as it heats.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg, lemon, butter, milk, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, lemon, butter, milk, cream. 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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