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Tapioca Pudding
Soak three tablespoonfuls of tapioca in water enough to cover it, about three hours, then put on it one quart of boiling milk, and boil in a farina kettle about fifteen minutes; beat the yolks of four eggs in one cupful sugar, stir them into the pudding five minutes before it is done. Flavor with vanilla or lemon, beat the whites of four eggs, with two or three tablespoons of sugar, mix one cupful of grated cocoanut with this. Put on the pudding and brown.
A stirred tapioca custard finished with a coconut meringue. Two details in the original need translating: the vessel and the very light hand with tapioca.
- Farina kettleThis is a double boiler — an inner pan set over simmering water, used for milk puddings that scorch easily. A stainless bowl or saucepan over a pot of water does the same job. Direct heat works only with constant stirring and a heavy pan.
- Which tapiocaThe three-hour soak points to pearl tapioca, large or small, which is what most recipes of this date call for; granulated or flake tapioca was also sold. Small pearls soaked three hours and cooked 15 minutes will come clear; large pearls need longer soaking and more like 30-40 minutes over water. Instant or minute tapioca needs no soaking at all and behaves differently, so do not substitute it measure for measure.
- The proportion is thinThree tablespoons of tapioca to a quart of milk gives a loose, spoonable custard rather than a set pudding — closer to what we would call a tapioca cream. If you want it thick enough to hold a shape, use five or six tablespoons.
- Adding the yolksBeat the yolks with the sugar, then thin them with a ladle of the hot milk before stirring them back in; dropped straight into a quart of near-boiling milk they can curdle. After the yolks go in, keep the mixture below a boil.
- Grated cocoanutThe original means fresh coconut, grated from the shell — moist, unsweetened, quite coarse. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the nearest shelf substitute; sweetened flake will push an already sweet meringue over the edge, so cut the two or three tablespoons of sugar in the whites if you use it.
- Browning the meringueThe original says only to put the meringue on and brown it, without specifying how. A moderate oven, around 350F for 12 to 15 minutes, will colour the peaks and set the meringue through; a broiler colours it in a couple of minutes but may leave the interior underset.
- YieldA quart of milk with four eggs serves six to eight. Serve warm or cold; the meringue softens on standing, so it is best the day it is made.
Tapioca — starch washed from the root of cassava — reached American kitchens through the West Indies and Brazilian trade and by the mid-nineteenth century was a fixture of the invalid tray and the family dessert, praised in household manuals as light and easily digested. Recipes of this sort belong to a whole family of late-Victorian milk puddings, along with rice, sago and farina. In this one, yolks and sugar are stirred in for richness, the whites beaten with sugar and browned on top so that nothing is wasted. The grated coconut marks it as slightly more festive than everyday, since fresh coconut meant buying a whole nut and grating it by hand.