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Apple Tapioca Pudding
To half tea-cup of tapioca, add one and one-half pints cold water, let it stand on the fire till cooked clear, stirring to prevent burning, remove, sweeten and flavor with wine and nutmeg; pour the tapioca into a deep dish in which have been placed six or eight pared and cored apples, bake until apples are done, and serve cold with cream.-Mrs. S. C. Lee.
A simple baked tapioca with whole apples set into it, from an era when tapioca came as hard pearls that had to be softened before they would thicken anything. The recipe assumes knowledge the modern cook no longer has, chiefly about what kind of tapioca is meant and how long whole apples take.
- The tapiocaThis most likely means pearl tapioca rather than the instant granules or minute tapioca sold today. Pearls generally benefit from a soak in the cold water before they go on the heat, or the centres can stay chalky. Instant tapioca behaves quite differently at this ratio and is not a straight substitute.
- MeasurementsNineteenth-century tea-cups varied and are usually reckoned somewhere between about 6 and 8 fl oz, so half a tea-cup is roughly 3 to 4 fl oz of dry pearls; a pint and a half is 3 cups of water. Either way this is a loose, pourable mixture rather than a stiff pudding, which is what you want since it has to flow around the apples.
- "Cooked clear"This is the hinge of the recipe. The pearls go from opaque white to translucent, which can take from about 15 minutes for small pearls to considerably longer for large ones over low heat with regular stirring. Cooked well past that point, the starch breaks down and the pudding turns gluey.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. About half a cup of sugar suits the volume here, added off the heat with a pinch of salt, and less if the apples are a sweet eating variety.
- The wineSherry, madeira or a sweet white wine, a tablespoon or two, stirred in after the pan comes off the heat so the aroma is not driven off. Grate the nutmeg fresh.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits. Whole pared apples take longer than many modern cooks expect: roughly 45 minutes to an hour and a quarter depending on variety and size, and they are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the core. Firm baking apples such as Rome hold their shape; softer varieties, and Bramleys, collapse into the tapioca.
- Dish and yieldA deep baking dish of three quarts or more is needed for six to eight apples, which should stand upright with the tapioca poured around and over them. Serves six to eight, one apple each.
- ServingCold, as written, with pouring cream rather than whipped. The tapioca thickens to a soft set as it cools.
Tapioca, the starch extracted from cassava root, reached American kitchens as an imported colonial product and by the 1870s was cheap enough to be used widely as a thickener. Buckeye Cookery gives it a whole run of puddings, since it stretched a little sugar and fruit into a dish for a large table and needed no eggs. Baking whole cored apples in a starch pudding is often likened to the older English apple dumpling, though the resemblance is a matter of impression rather than documented lineage. The splash of wine and grated nutmeg reflects flavouring habits of an earlier era.