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Lemon Tapioca
Soak over night one coffee cup of pearl Tapioca in one pint of cold water. In the morning add one quart of boiling water, the grated rind and juice of two or three lemons and about one and one half cups of granulated sugar, put over in a farina kettle and boil until thick like starch, then cool, and beat the whites of two eggs stiff, and stir through it. Place in small glass dishes, and put pieces of orange over the top, four or five small pieces are enough. Eat with sponge cake or lady fingers. A pinch of salt.
A late-Victorian chilled tapioca, thickened over water and lightened with uncooked beaten egg white. The technique is sound but the finishing step puts raw egg into a dish that is never heated again.
- Why it fails todayThe whites are beaten and stirred through the tapioca only after it has cooled, so they are never brought anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella. The pudding is then held cold in open glass dishes and eaten as-is, which gives any contamination time rather than heat. Use a current recipe if you want this dessert.
- A coffee cupIn books of this period a coffee cup is smaller than a modern mug and generally reckoned at three-quarters to one cup. The proportion here is roughly one part dry tapioca to six parts liquid (a pint of soaking water plus a quart of boiling water), which sets to a spoonable pudding rather than a pourable cream.
- Pearl tapiocaThis means the large opaque cassava pearls, which genuinely need the overnight soak specified. Modern quick-cooking or minute tapioca is pre-gelatinised granules and behaves nothing like it; instant would turn to paste long before the stated boil.
- Farina kettleA double boiler. Tapioca and sugar scorch readily over direct heat, and the gentle indirect cooking is what keeps the pearls whole and translucent instead of muddy.
- "Thick like starch"The visual cue is a cooked cornstarch pudding: the mixture coats the spoon and the pearls have gone from white centres to clear throughout. It thickens further as it cools.
- Yield and servingThe quantity of liquid makes a large batch, enough to fill a good many of the small glass dishes the recipe describes. The orange "pieces" are best read as peeled segments with membrane removed, set on top just before serving so they do not weep.
Tapioca reached nineteenth-century American kitchens as a shelf-stable imported starch, made from the root of cassava and sold in graded pearls, flake and granulated forms. It was cheap, kept indefinitely in a dry pantry and had a reputation as light, digestible food suitable for invalids and children, and tapioca puddings appear frequently in household and church cookbooks of the 1870s through 1900s. Lemon versions like this one belong to a family of "fruit tapiocas" flavoured with citrus juice and rind, and the presentation here is characteristic of the period's dessert course: small glass dishes, a garnish of fresh fruit, and a plain sponge cake or lady finger alongside.