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Tapioca Puff Pudding
Soak over night one cupful pearl tapioca in one quart of milk. In the morning put it in a farina kettle, and let it come to a boil; then sweeten it to taste, and add the beaten yolks of five eggs, a little salt, and one tablespoonful of vanilla or lemon, and bake, but not very long; take it from the oven, and whip the whites of the five eggs very stiff, and stir them through the pudding.- Serve when about half cold. No sauce required.
A Victorian tapioca custard that gets its lift not from baking a meringue on top but from folding the beaten whites through the pudding after it leaves the oven. The original assumes you know what a farina kettle is and how sweet you like things.
- Farina kettleA double boiler. Tapioca and milk scorch readily over direct heat, so cook the soaked tapioca in a bowl or insert set over simmering water until the pearls are translucent and the milk has thickened.
- Pearl tapioca, not instantThe recipe depends on large pearl tapioca, which needs the overnight soak to soften. Instant or minute tapioca will dissolve into paste and small pearl will need less soaking; if you substitute, follow the package hydration and expect a smoother, less beady pudding.
- Sweeten to tasteFor a quart of milk and a cup of tapioca, something in the range of 1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar would suit, though the original leaves it entirely to the cook. Add it while the mixture is hot so it dissolves before the yolks go in.
- Tempering the yolksBeat the five yolks with a ladleful of the hot tapioca before stirring them into the pot, or they will scramble. Do this off the heat.
- Oven temperature and timeThe original gives no oven setting; 'bake, but not very long' indicates only a short bake. A moderate oven, around 350F, for roughly 20 to 25 minutes in a buttered 2-quart dish, until the custard is set at the edges and barely trembling at the centre, is a workable modern reading. A pan of hot water around the dish gives more insurance against curdling.
- A tablespoon of vanillaThat is a generous measure by modern standards, and modern extracts may well be stronger than what the original cook had to hand. Two teaspoons of vanilla, or the grated zest of a lemon plus a teaspoon of juice, gives a truer balance.
- The whitesFolded into the pudding straight from the oven, the whites are warmed but not cooked through. If that matters in your household, use pasteurized whites, or fold them in and return the dish to the oven for five minutes to set them.
- ServingServe barely warm, as directed; the texture goes dense and rubbery once fully chilled. Serves six to eight, and the note that no sauce is required is accurate: the folded whites make it light enough to stand alone.
Tapioca reached American kitchens as a colonial-trade commodity, the dried starch of cassava root shipped from Brazil and the West Indies, and it came to occupy the economical dessert chapter alongside sago, cornstarch and farina. Cookbooks of the period treated it as the frugal cook's custard extender: a cup of pearls and a quart of milk feeds a table that five eggs alone could not. The "puff" here is the trick that distinguishes the recipe from ordinary baked tapioca, folding stiff whites through the finished pudding rather than piling them on top as a meringue. The specified farina kettle is a purpose-made double boiler sold for cooking breakfast cereals.