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Dessert

Apple Tapioca

Apple Tapioca is a baked dessert of apples filled with cloves and covered in cooked tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Apple Tapioca

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the pearl tapioca in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add salt and cook until the tapioca is transparent.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the sour apples, then place them in a baking dish.

  2. Fill the apples with whole cloves and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the cooked tapioca over the apples and bake at 350°F (175°C) until the apples are tender.

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

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

  3. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 as it cooks and turns transparent, giving the dish its soft, pudding-like body.
Sour apples
Provide the main fruit flavour and hold their shape while softening during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sourness of the apples.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca until transparent. Pearl tapioca starch must gelatinise fully to become clear and tender. If it is underdone, it stays chalky and firm, and the dish will have a grainy texture after baking.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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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