Home › Baked Puddings › Tapioca Custard
Tapioca Custard
Put 2 tablespoonfuls fine tapioca in double boiler with 1 pint milk, cook and stir till tapioca is transparent. Add yolks of 2 eggs, beaten with 3 tablespoonfuls sugar, and pinch salt; stir till thickened. Add whites whipped to stiff froth, stir lightly three minutes; take from fire; add flavoring when cooled. If pearl or lump tapioca is used, it must be soaked in cold water for several hours before cooking.
A stovetop custard thickened with both tapioca and egg, despite its place among the baked puddings. The hinge is heat control: once the yolks go in, the mixture must thicken without ever simmering.
- Fine tapiocaThis means granulated or quick-cooking tapioca, the sort sold as minute tapioca, not the large pearls used for bubble tea. Two tablespoons to a pint of milk gives a soft, spoonable custard rather than a set pudding.
- Pearl tapiocaThe closing line matters if you buy the large white pearls. Soak several hours or overnight in cold water, drain, and expect a longer cook and a chewier texture; the pearls should be clear through with no white center.
- The double boilerKeep the water at a bare simmer and not touching the upper pan. Direct heat scorches milk and will scramble the yolks the moment they are added.
- TemperingWhisk a ladle of the hot tapioca into the beaten yolks and sugar before returning everything to the pan. The custard is thick enough when it coats a spoon, somewhere around 170-175F; the starch gives some protection, but pushing it to a simmer risks curdling.
- The whitesWhipped whites folded into the hot custard for three minutes over the water bath lighten it considerably. They will not reach a full pasteurizing temperature, so use pasteurized eggs if you are serving anyone frail, very young or pregnant.
- FlavoringA teaspoon of vanilla, or a little grated lemon rind, added off the heat once cooled, as directed. Alcohol-based extracts lose some of their aroma if stirred into a steaming pan.
- YieldA pint of milk plus eggs and sugar, so roughly a pint and a bit before the whites are folded in and more after. Chill in individual cups; it thickens further as it cools and forms a skin unless covered.
Tapioca is starch washed from the root of cassava, a South American plant that reached European and North American kitchens through colonial trade routes, much of the nineteenth-century supply arriving via Brazil and the East Indies. Cooks first knew it as hard pearls that had to be soaked for hours, which is why this recipe still carries the instruction as an afterthought; the granulated "minute" form that made tapioca a weeknight pudding is generally traced to New England manufacturers in the 1890s. The dish itself sits in a long line of milk-and-starch nursery puddings alongside rice, sago and cornstarch, all valued for stretching a pint of milk and a couple of eggs into a dessert for four.