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Fig Tapioca Pudding
Cook until clear three tablespoons of tapioca, in two cups of water, with one teaspoon butter. Chop one-half pound of figs very fine, add one cup of water, one cup of sugar, cook until it thickens and is smooth; then mix with tapioca, adding one-half teaspoon of vanilla. Serve with whipped cream.
— Mrs. Eugene A. Chilson
A simple stovetop pudding of two parts cooked separately and combined. The only real difficulty is the tapioca, which behaved differently in 1900 than what sits on a supermarket shelf now.
- Which tapiocaThe recipe says only "tapioca." Three tablespoons in two cups of water would work with small pearl tapioca, which generally wants a soak (older instructions ask for an hour or more, sometimes overnight) before it will cook clear. Modern quick-cooking or "minute" tapioca is partly pre-cooked and thickens in a few minutes without soaking; if you use it, expect a stiffer result and taste as you go rather than following the quantity blind.
- "Until clear" is the testSoaked pearl tapioca goes from opaque white to translucent with a small white dot at the centre, then clear throughout. That is doneness, not a clock reading; figure 15 to 20 minutes over low heat with frequent stirring, since tapioca settles and scorches.
- Low heat, and stirBoth mixtures catch easily, the fig paste especially once the sugar concentrates. A heavy saucepan and a wooden spoon across the bottom are worth more here than any timing.
- The figsDried figs, not fresh. Half a pound is roughly 8 oz, about a cup and a half chopped. Stem them first, and chopping is much easier if you oil the knife or pulse them in a processor with a spoonful of the sugar.
- The sugarA full cup of sugar to half a pound of already-sweet dried figs makes a very sweet pudding by current taste. Half to two-thirds of a cup gives a fig flavour that still reads as fruit.
- The butterOne teaspoon in two cups of water is too little to enrich the pudding much; it is probably there for gloss and mouthfeel. The recipe includes it, so it is easiest to follow suit.
- Serving and yieldThe recipe gives no yield; the combined volume suggests roughly four to six servings. Combine while both parts are warm so they blend; tapioca sets considerably as it cools, and it may want a little loosening with milk or cream before serving.
Tapioca reached American kitchens as a nineteenth-century commodity — cassava starch from Brazil and the West Indies, sold in pearls or flake — and by the late nineteenth century it had become a standby of the plain American dessert course, cheap, bland and endlessly extendable with whatever fruit was in the pantry. Dried figs were the natural partner: shipped from Smyrna, they kept indefinitely and gave a pudding real body and sweetness at a season when fresh fruit was gone. Community cookbooks like this one, compiled by subscription from the receipts of named local women, are where such household desserts survive; Mrs. Chilson's contribution is typical of the genre in assuming the cook already knows how long to soak her tapioca and how thick "thickens" ought to be.