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TAPIOCA JELLY (another way)
Take one pound of tapioca and six pints of water. Let the tapioca soak in the water all night; in the morning boil until quite clear and of a proper consistency, then flavour to taste.
A one-line invalid-cookery formula from the era when tapioca was sold as a bulk dry good. The ratio and the vagueness both need translating.
- The measuresCassell's is a British book, so a pint is the imperial 20 fl oz: six pints is about 120 fl oz, or 3.4 litres. One pound of pearl tapioca is roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups, so the working ratio is about 1 part tapioca to 5 or 6 parts water by volume.
- Scale it downAs written this makes something close to three quarts of jelly, enough for a household sickroom over several days. A quarter batch — 4 oz tapioca to 1 1/2 imperial pints (about 850 ml) water — is a sensible single test.
- Use pearl or seed tapiocaThe recipe assumes hard pearls that need overnight hydration. Instant or minute tapioca is pre-gelatinised and will disintegrate into paste; quick-cooking granules skip the soak entirely and cook in five minutes, which defeats the method.
- "Boil until quite clear"This is the hinge. The pearls are done when no white opaque centre remains — translucent all the way through. Undercooked centres stay chalky and are unlikely to soften much as the jelly stands.
- Watch the bottom of the panA starch this thick scorches readily once it begins to set. Use a heavy pan over low heat and stir more or less constantly for the fifteen to twenty-odd minutes the boil may take; a diffuser helps.
- "A proper consistency"Aim for a spoon-coating thickness while hot — it will firm considerably as it cools, and thicken again overnight. If it stiffens past what you want, thin it with a little boiling water off the heat.
- FlavouringLemon juice and peel, sugar, and sometimes a little sherry, wine or brandy stirred in at the end are common in period tapioca jellies. Add sugar and any acid after the pearls have gone clear, since acid can break down the starch and weaken the set.
- Serving and keepingPour into a wetted mould or individual glasses and chill. It keeps three or four days refrigerated but continues to firm and weep slightly; it does not freeze well.
Tapioca is starch washed from the root of cassava (manioc), a South American plant carried by Portuguese traders across the tropics; the name comes through Portuguese from Tupi tipi'oka, meaning the starch pressed out of the root. By the time Cassell's was compiled, tapioca had joined sago, arrowroot and semolina in the standard British repertoire of "invalid cookery" — bland, digestible starch jellies fed to convalescents, infants and the elderly, which is why it is flavoured only "to taste." The overnight soak reflects the product then sold: hard, unprocessed pearls that would not soften in a short boil, unlike the pre-gelatinised quick-cooking tapioca that displaced them in the twentieth century.