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Apple Tapioca Pudding
Soak over night two cups of tapioca, add two cups of apple sauce, three-fourths of a cup of sugar, yolks of three eggs thoroughly beaten, grated rind and juice of one lemon, and one-fourth cup of milk.
Stir all well together and bake in moderate oven about twenty minutes. Make meringue of whites of eggs, and brown slightly.
— Mrs. Tremain Loud
A late-Victorian apple pudding thickened with pearl tapioca and finished under a meringue. The soaking step is doing most of the work, and the short bake assumes tapioca that is already soft.
- The hinge: the tapioca must be fully swollenTwenty minutes in the oven will not cook raw pearls. Soak them overnight in water to cover generously, and if the centers are still opaque and chalky in the morning, simmer them gently until they turn translucent before mixing. Undercooked tapioca stays gritty no matter how long the pudding bakes.
- Two cups is dry measureTwo cups here is most likely dry measure -- dry pearl tapioca swells considerably on soaking, giving a very large, stiff pudding. Modern instant or minute tapioca is not interchangeable here; it is pre-gelatinized and will turn to paste. Use old-fashioned small pearl tapioca.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 350F. Bake in a buttered dish deep enough to leave room for the meringue.
- Apple sauceUnsweetened is what the recipe assumes, since three-quarters of a cup of sugar is added separately. Sweetened commercial sauce will make the pudding cloying; cut the sugar to about half a cup if that is all you have.
- The quarter cup of milkIt is a small amount beside the soaked tapioca and the apple sauce, which supply most of the moisture. There is no need to increase it.
- MeringueThree whites beaten stiff; the recipe gives no sugar for them, but the usual proportion is about two tablespoons per white. 'Brown slightly' at 350F takes roughly 8 to 10 minutes; if you want the whites cooked through rather than merely colored, hold it at a lower temperature, around 325F, until the meringue is set and dry to the touch.
- Yield and servingEnough for eight to ten as written. Serve barely warm or at room temperature; the meringue weeps if the pudding is refrigerated overnight.
Tapioca, a starch from the cassava root, was common in American household cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward because it was cheap, kept well in the pantry, and thickened without flour or a custard's fuss. Pairing it with apple sauce made economical use of apples cooked down and kept on hand through the autumn. A receipt signed with the contributor's married name is characteristic of community cookbooks assembled from subscribers' contributions.