Minerva Coverdale
1/3 cup pearl tapioca 1 cup cold water 3 cups boiling water 1/2 cup powdered sugar
WINE SOUP
½ teaspoon salt 3-inch piece stick cinnamon 1 pint claret Soak tapioca in cold water two hours. Drain, add to boiling water with salt and cinnamon; let boil three minutes, then cook in double boiler until tapioca is transparent. Cool, add wine and sugar. Serve very cold.
Sincerely yours,
A cold wine soup thickened with tapioca, of a type once served either as a first course or as a dessert. The recipe is sound as written; the main pitfalls are the tapioca itself and the wording of the ingredients.
- Pearl tapioca is not instant tapiocaLarge pearl tapioca must be soaked and then simmered gently until the pearls turn from opaque white to clear with only a pin-point of white at the centre. Quick-cooking or minute tapioca will disintegrate into paste and will not give the suspended pearls the dish depends on.
- How long in the double boilerThe three minutes at a boil is only the start. The recipe gives no time for the double-boiler stage; soaked pearls may need anywhere from about half an hour to an hour over simmering water to go transparent, so judge by the pearls rather than the clock, stirring occasionally so they do not clump on the bottom.
- "Powdered sugar"In cookbooks of this period the term usually means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-laced confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar dissolves cleanly in the cold liquid and is the closer match.
- ClaretA nineteenth-century British and American name for red Bordeaux, and by extension any dry red of that style. A medium-bodied, not heavily oaked red works; the pint is a full US pint, 2 cups.
- The wine goes in uncookedThe claret is added only after cooling, so the fruit and the alcohol stay intact. This is an alcoholic dish; nothing burns off. Adding wine to hot tapioca would drive off some of that character.
- Remove the cinnamonThe stick is there to infuse. The recipe does not say to remove it, but it is worth fishing out before chilling, as prolonged steeping can push the flavour towards the medicinal.
- It thickens as it coolsTapioca sets up considerably in the refrigerator. If it stiffens past a spoonable soup, slacken it with a little cold water or more wine before serving.
- YieldAbout 5 cups finished, serving four to six in small cups or shallow bowls. Serve genuinely cold, straight from the refrigerator.
Cold wine soups belong to a family of German summer dishes — Weinsuppe and the various Kalte Schalen — served chilled, lightly sweetened, and thickened with tapioca, sago or breadcrumbs. They sat comfortably at either end of a meal, which is why the same formula turns up in period books sometimes as a soup and sometimes as a dessert. Tapioca, a starch extracted from cassava root and shipped in graded pearls, was a staple of American pantries by the late nineteenth century, valued precisely because it thickened without clouding a clear liquid the way flour or cornstarch would. Its appearance here, in a collection of dishes contributed by stage performers, is easy enough to understand: the dish is showy but undemanding, made ahead and held cold — useful for a household keeping theatre hours.