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Tapioca Pudding, French
Take two ounces of tapioca, and boil it in half a pint of water until it begins to melt, then add half a pint of milk by degrees, and boil until the tapioca becomes very thick; add a well-beaten egg, sugar, and flavouring to taste, and bake gently for three-quarters of an hour. This preparation of tapioca is superior to any other for delicate children and invalids.
A plain baked tapioca custard from the era when starch puddings were nursery and sickroom staples. The measurements are imperial and the oven direction is vague, but the method is sound.
- The half-pintsCassell's is a British book, so half a pint is 10 fl oz — about 1¼ US cups. You need 10 oz water and 10 oz milk, roughly 2½ cups of liquid in total for 2 oz of tapioca.
- Two ounces of tapiocaThat is about 1/3 cup of pearl tapioca by volume. Small pearl or seed tapioca behaves as the recipe expects; instant/minute tapioca absorbs far faster and will thicken before the milk goes in.
- "Bake gently"The book gives no temperature. In a modern oven, 300-325F is a reasonable reading of a gentle oven; much hotter and the egg curdles at the edges before the centre sets, leaving a weeping pudding.
- Add the milk by degreesThis is the hinge. Pouring cold milk into cooking tapioca all at once stalls the swelling and leaves hard cores in the pearls. Add it in three or four additions, keeping the pot at a bare simmer and stirring.
- The eggLet the thickened tapioca cool for a few minutes, then beat a little of it into the egg before returning the lot to the pan — otherwise the egg scrambles on contact and no amount of baking will smooth it out.
- Flavouring and sugarThe recipe leaves both open; a couple of tablespoons of sugar with vanilla, lemon zest or grated nutmeg suits it. Salt is not mentioned but a good pinch is what keeps it from tasting of nothing.
- Time and yieldThree-quarters of an hour in a gentle oven (300-325F is a workable modern equivalent, though the book states none) in a shallow buttered dish is about right; the pudding should be set with a slight tremble at the centre. It serves two or three, or one invalid over two days.
Tapioca is starch extracted from cassava root, a South American plant carried by Portuguese and Spanish traders through the tropics; by the nineteenth century the processed pearls reached British kitchens as a cheap imported dry good alongside sago and arrowroot. Those three formed the backbone of what Victorian cookery books called invalid or sickroom cookery — together, starches thought suitable for anyone with a weak stomach, which is exactly the claim made in the last line here. The method itself is distinctive: the tapioca is cooked down in water first, then enriched with milk and egg and baked as a custard, instead of being boiled straight in milk and served as a loose porridge. The technique of setting it with egg lies behind a whole family of baked milk puddings.