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Tapioca Cake
Tapioca is an article that swells very much, and which requires a long time to be done thoroughly. If you boil it over too brisk a fire, it will become tough; if over a very slow fire, it will be as mellow as marrow, and then it is extremely pleasant to the palate. Boil a pint of cream and a pint of milk with a little sugar and very little salt. Then add the peel of half a lemon; but if the taste of orange-flowers, roses, or vanilla, etc., should be more agreeable, use them in preference, according to taste. Put quarter of pound of tapioca into the cream, and let it boil over a very slow fire; when it is done throw in a piece of butter, and break the yolks of six eggs, which beat up with it, and pour into a pie-dish or cake-tin. When you send up the first course, beat the whites of the eggs, pour them gently over the rest, and set the whole in a moderate oven. If you wish to make a cake, sprinkle a mould twice over with clarified butter and crumbs of bread: mix with the preparation some dried cherries and currants, and proceed as you would do for a souffle. When done turn the mould upside-down in a dish, and send up hot.
A rich tapioca pudding that doubles as a hot souffle-style moulded cake. The book's own opening lines carry the key instruction: the tapioca must swell slowly over the gentlest possible heat.
- Heat is the hingeCook the tapioca in the milk and cream over the lowest heat you can hold, stirring often, until the grains are translucent and soft to the centre — 30 to 45 minutes for pearl tapioca. Brisk boiling sets the starch before the grain hydrates and gives the tough, bead-like texture the author warns about.
- Which tapiocaThis wants small pearl tapioca, not instant granules and not tapioca flour. Modern instant tapioca thickens in five minutes and will turn to paste over a long cook; if it is all you have, the timings here do not apply.
- QuantitiesIf this is a British text, a pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, i.e. about 2 1/2 cups each of cream and milk in US measure. A quarter pound of tapioca is 4 oz, roughly 2/3 to 3/4 cup of pearls.
- FlavouringsOrange-flower water and rose water are still sold and are far stronger than the lemon peel they replace — a teaspoon of either is ample for this quantity. Vanilla means a split pod steeped in the hot milk rather than extract, which flashes off over a long simmer.
- The eggsLet the tapioca cool below a simmer before beating in the yolks, or they will scramble in threads. The butter is not measured; an ounce or two is in keeping with the richness.
- "When you send up the first course"This is dinner-service timing: the whites go on and the dish goes into the oven as the soup leaves the kitchen, so the top browns while the table eats. In practice, whip the whites to soft peaks, spread them over, and bake.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'moderate' is conventionally read as about 350F. The meringue-topped pie-dish version should need roughly 20 to 25 minutes, until set and lightly coloured.
- The moulded cakeSprinkle the mould twice over with clarified butter and fine breadcrumbs, as directed — this is what lets it release. Fold the whites into the whole mixture for this version, bake in the same moderate oven, and turn it out as soon as it leaves the oven, since it will sink as it cools like any souffle.
- YieldEnough for six to eight as a hot pudding. Serve immediately in either form.
Tapioca, the washed starch of the cassava root, reached British kitchens as a colonial import and was treated for most of the nineteenth century as an invalid food and a nursery pudding — cheap, bland, easily digested. Recipes like this one belong to the other tradition, in which the same starch stands in for the ground almonds or rice of a grand entremets: enriched with cream, perfumed with orange-flower or rose water, lightened with beaten whites and sent up hot from a crumbed mould. The instruction to add the whites "when you send up the first course" belongs to a style of dining organised in numbered courses, where a hot sweet had to be timed against the progress of the meal. The insistence on a very slow fire is a reminder that this was written for a cook who judged heat by position at the fire — an assumed skill rather than a stated temperature.