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Tapioca Jelly
Wash a quarter of a pound of tapioca, and soak it in a pint of water for some hours. Put it into a saucepan over the fire with another pint of cold water and the thin rind of a lemon or an orange, and let it simmer gently until quite clear and thick, and keep adding at intervals small quantities of boiling water to make up half a pint. Remove the lemon-rind, pour out the tapioca, sweeten it, add as much lemon-juice as is agreeable, and a little brandy or wine if liked. Pour the prepared tapioca into small damp moulds, and turn it out when cold and stiff. Tapioca jelly is very good eaten with preserved fruit and cream or milk. Time to simmer, about one hour. Probable cost, 5d., exclusive of the wine or brandy. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A starch-set jelly that relies on nothing but tapioca, water and patience. The one thing to get right is the tapioca itself: this recipe assumes whole pearls, not the instant granules sold in most supermarkets.
- Which tapiocaUse small or medium pearl tapioca, which needs the long soak and slow simmer described. Instant or "quick-cooking" tapioca is pre-gelatinised and will thicken in minutes into a sludge that never becomes clear, and the large boba-style pearls behave differently again.
- QuantitiesA quarter pound is about 4 oz (115 g) of dry pearls; a pint in this English book is 20 fl oz, so roughly 2 1/2 cups for the soak and again for the cooking. Using US pints throughout gives a slightly stiffer jelly, which is no disaster.
- The water instructionThe line about "adding boiling water to make up half a pint" means topping up as the pan reduces, not adding half a pint all at once. Add a few tablespoons at a time so the mixture never goes off the boil and never sticks.
- There is no gelatinThe set comes entirely from gelatinised tapioca starch, so it will be soft, slightly elastic and cloudy-clear rather than crisp. Do not expect it to unmould with sharp edges, and chill it thoroughly — several hours, ideally overnight.
- Simmer until translucentThe hour is a guide; the real signal is that the pearls have lost their white opaque centres entirely. Any chalky specks left will read as grit in the finished jelly.
- Lemon rind"Thin rind" means zest pared with a peeler and no white pith, which turns bitter over an hour's cooking. Remove it before sweetening or the flavour keeps developing in the mould.
- Sweetening and acidThe recipe leaves both to taste; start with about 3 tablespoons of sugar and the juice of half a lemon, stirred in while the mixture is still hot so the sugar dissolves. Add lemon juice at the end rather than during cooking, as acid can weaken a starch set.
- Moulds and yieldRinse the moulds with cold water and do not dry them — that damp film is what lets the jelly slide out. The recipe says it is sufficient for five or six persons, so divide it between small moulds, or set it in one large basin and turn it out whole.
Tapioca reached Victorian Britain as a colonial import, processed starch from the cassava root, grown in Brazil and, by this period, elsewhere in the tropics; the dish is priced here at fivepence for five or six people. Tapioca, sago, arrowroot and ground rice were standard invalid and nursery foods of the period, valued because they were bland, digestible and set without gelatin — which otherwise meant isinglass or long-boiled calves' feet, though packet gelatine was also on sale by this date. The optional spoonful of brandy or wine fits the same tradition, spirits being commonly added to sickroom dishes as a supposed restorative. Served with preserved fruit and cream, though, this is simply a plain cold pudding of the kind that carried a household between fresh fruit seasons.