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Apple Tapioca (Cup pearl or cup minute)
3/4 cup pearl or 1/2 cup minute tapioca Cold water 2 1/2 cups boiling water 1/2 teaspoon salt 7 sour apples 1/2 cup sugar Soak tapioca one hour in cold water to cover, drain, add boiling water and salt; cook in double boiler until transparent. Core and pare apples, arrange in buttered pudding-dish, fill cavities with sugar, pour over tapioca, and bake in moderate oven until apples are soft. Serve with sugar and cream or Cream Sauce I. Minute Tapioca requires no soaking.
A plain baked apple pudding thickened with tapioca, from the era when pearl tapioca still needed an hour's soak. The whole apples are baked in place, so the dish is only done when they are collapsing.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F. Reckon on 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size and variety of the apples; they should yield completely to a skewer.
- Pearl vs. minute tapiocaPearl tapioca is the old large-bead type and still sold in Asian and Caribbean groceries. Minute (quick-cooking) tapioca is the granulated product sold as Minute Tapioca or tapioca pudding mix base, and as the recipe notes, it needs no soak.
- Cook until transparentThis is the hinge. Pearl tapioca that goes into the oven still chalky at the centre will stay chalky; hold it over the double boiler until every bead is clear through. The recipe gives no time, only the visual test.
- Sour applesA firm tart cooking apple such as Bramley, Granny Smith or Northern Spy. Sweet dessert apples turn to sauce.
- Seven applesSeven medium apples want a dish of about 2 quarts. If yours are large, six is plenty; they should sit in a single layer with the tapioca filling the gaps.
- Cream Sauce IThe reference is to another recipe in the same book. Pouring cream does the same job.
- YieldServes six to seven, one apple each. Best warm rather than hot; the tapioca sets as it cools and reheats poorly.