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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of tapioca and apples flavored with sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Tapioca Pudding

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 ↓

Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca and salt in 1½ pints of water for several hours in a warm place.

  2. Peel the apples and remove the cores.

  3. Fill the apples with sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  4. Place the apples in a pudding dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the tapioca with melted butter and a little cold milk.

  2. Pour the tapioca mixture over the apples.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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, giving the pudding a soft, tender, custard-like body.
Tart apples
Hold their shape as they bake and add a tart flavour that balances the sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smoother mouthfeel and a mellow flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca fully. Tapioca pearls must absorb water over several hours before baking. If they are not fully hydrated, they stay firm or chalky in the finished pudding, and the thickening will be uneven.

Swap the apple

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

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

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