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Coffee Cocoanut Tapioca
½ cup Dromedary Tapioca 1/2 cup Dromedary 2 cups left-over coffee 1/2 cup sugar Cocoanut 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Cook tapioca in coffee for about 15 minutes. When cool, add cocoanut, sugar and vanilla. Divide into wet individual molds or pour into one large mold. Turn out and serve with cream or milk.
The ingredient column in the original was set in two columns and has run together in reprinting, so read the quantities with care before you start. Everything else is straightforward: a coffee pudding stiffened with tapioca and flecked with shredded coconut.
- The ingredient listThe printed page was checked: the recipe calls for 1/2 cup tapioca and 1/2 cup cocoanut, which is what our text now gives. The two ingredients were set in parallel columns, so the lines read interleaved.
- Which tapiocaDromedary sold a quick-cooking granulated tapioca, which is what a 15-minute cook time implies. Modern minute tapioca behaves the same way. Large pearl tapioca will not soften in 15 minutes and needs a long soak first.
- Left-over coffeeWritten for a household that made coffee by the potful and did not throw any away. Use brewed coffee that is strong but not bitter; long-stewed percolator dregs will carry their harshness into the pudding.
- Sugar and vanilla go in off the heatThe recipe adds them after the tapioca has cooled. Vanilla extract does lose aroma in a boiling pan, whatever the book's reasoning. Stir the sugar in while the pudding is still warm enough to dissolve it, then the vanilla and coconut as it cools.
- Coconut texturePackaged "cocoanut" of this period was generally dried shredded coconut, drier and coarser than today's sweetened flake, and most likely unsweetened. If you use sweetened flake, cut the sugar to about 1/3 cup.
- Wetting the moldsRinsing the molds in cold water and leaving them damp is what lets the pudding release cleanly. The recipe gives no chilling time; chill until fully set before turning out, as tapioca needs time to firm enough to hold a shape.
- YieldSeveral small molds or one large one; the finished quantity runs to something over a pint. Serve with plain cream or milk poured over, as directed — no whipping.
Dromedary was the grocery brand of Hills Brothers of New York, best known for dates and shredded coconut, and it issued little promotional booklets of recipes — hence a coconut dessert that also has to find work for the company's tapioca. The economy here is genuine rather than decorative: leftover coffee was a standing problem in houses that brewed a full pot each morning, and cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries repurposed it into jellies, blancmanges, custards and puddings rather than pour it away. Tapioca itself, milled from cassava root and imported through the Southeast Asian trade, had by this period become an inexpensive pantry thickener sold in both pearl and quick-cooking granulated form, and molded tapioca puddings turned out onto a dish were cheap, made ahead, and required no eggs.