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Tapioca Puree
1 quart white stock, or half stock and half milk, 1/4 pint cream, 1 tablespoon melted Crisco, yolks of 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon fine sago or crushed tapioca, salt and pepper to taste.
The stock should be well flavored, otherwise it must be simmered with a little onion, carrot, celery, and herbs, and strained for use. Bring stock to boiling point, sprinkle in sago, or tapioca, and stir and cook until it becomes transparent; then let soup cool slightly. Mix yolks of eggs and the cream together, then the melted Crisco, and add to soup and stir till it thickens; it should have the consistency of single cream. When a thicker soup is desired, mix teaspoon flour or cornstarch with a little milk, and add it to soup at same time as sago or tapioca. Season to taste, and serve.
A classic egg-and-cream liaison soup, thickened lightly with sago or tapioca. It is simple, but it is unforgiving at exactly one moment.
- Never let it boil after the eggs go inOnce the yolk-and-cream mixture is stirred into the soup, keep it below a simmer — around 170-180F. A boil will scramble the yolks and leave grainy threads suspended in the broth, which no amount of whisking will fix.
- Temper firstThe instruction to cool the soup slightly is the safeguard. Better still, whisk a ladleful of the hot soup into the yolks and cream before returning the whole to the pan.
- 1/4 pint creamAbout half a cup, if the book's pints are the 16-ounce American pint, as a Procter & Gamble volume most likely intends; on the imperial pint it would be nearer 5 fluid ounces. "Single cream" in the last line means light or table cream, roughly 18-20 percent fat — the target consistency, not an ingredient.
- CriscoThis book was published as a promotional volume for Crisco, which is why hydrogenated shortening turns up in a delicate soup. A tablespoon of butter does the same enriching job and tastes considerably better here.
- Sago and crushed tapiocaBoth come from starchy palm or cassava root and behave alike. Fine pearl tapioca or the small quick-cooking type works; instant tapioca dissolves too fast and will cloud rather than stay in suspension. Cook until the grains turn clear, about 10-15 minutes.
- White stockAn unbrowned stock from veal or chicken bones. A good unsalted chicken stock is the modern equivalent. If it tastes flat, the recipe's own remedy is sound: simmer it with onion, carrot, celery and a bay leaf, then strain.
- YieldA quart of stock plus cream serves four as a first course, or three as a light supper. Serve straight away; reheating past a simmer will break it.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which had come on the market in 1911 — hence the tablespoon of shortening in a soup that would traditionally have taken butter. The dish itself belongs to an older tradition: a purée in the French kitchen classification is a soup thickened with something passed through a sieve, though by the early twentieth century English and American cookbooks used the word loosely for any smooth, thickened soup. The real work here is done by the yolk-and-cream liaison, a technique that predates commercial thickeners entirely and remains the reason the soup succeeds or curdles. Sago, imported from Southeast Asian palm pith, was a staple of the invalid cookery of the period, valued for being bland and easily digested; crushed tapioca from cassava was its cheaper and more available substitute, and the two were treated as interchangeable in household books of the era.