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Dessert

Apple Tapioca Pudding

A baked pudding of tapioca and apples flavored with white wine and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Make the tapioca

  1. Combine ½ cup tapioca and 1½ pints cold water in a pot.

  2. Heat until clear.

  3. Remove from heat and sweeten with ½ cup white wine and ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a pudding dish with butter and place the tart apples inside.

  2. Pour the tapioca mixture over the apples.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the apples are tender.

  4. Serve warm with sugar and cream.

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

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

  2. White wine + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the liquid into a soft, pudding-like set as it cooks and cools.
Tart apples
Provide the fruit base and tartness that balances the sweetened tapioca.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, sweetening the tapioca along with its flavor.
Grated nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the tapioca.

The step that matters

Heat the tapioca until clear. Tapioca starch must be heated fully to swell and gelatinize; underheated tapioca stays cloudy and grainy and will not thicken properly in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, apple, butter, sugar, 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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