Home › Recipes › Tapioca Pudding
Tapioca Pudding
1/3 cup pearl tapioca 3 1/4 cups milk 1/3 cup sugar 2 eggs Grated yellow rind of 1/2 lemon 1/4 teaspoon salt Cook the tapioca in two cups of the milk in a double boiler till transparent. This will require two or three hours. If the minute tapioca is used, it will require less time to cook. When the tapioca is transparent, add to it the sugar, salt, and lemon rind. Beat the yolks of the eggs; mix with them the rest of the milk, cold 1 1/4 cups; then add them to the tapioca. Mix all well together, pour into a baking pan, set the pan in a pan of hot water, and bake till the pudding is set. Do not bake too long or the pudding will curdle. When done, remove from the oven. Add a few grains of salt to the whites of the eggs, beat them stiff, fold into them three tablespoons sugar. Spread this on the pudding, and put into the oven to brown lightly. Strawberry or Pineapple Tapioca 1/2 cup pearl tapioca 3 cups water 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 pint diced fresh or canned pineapple or 1 pint fresh strawberries 2/3 cup sugar Soak the tapioca in one-half cup water overnight. Heat the remaining two and one-half cups of water to boiling, stir in the soaked tapioca and seugar, and cook in a double boiler till transparent, which will require from one to two hours. Partially cool, then carefully stir in the fruit. Serve cold with cream, whipped cream, or custard sauce.
A baked tapioca custard with meringue, in the style of the early twentieth-century cooking-school books. The old-style pearl tapioca is the reason for the alarming cooking times.
- Which tapiocaLarge pearl tapioca is what the recipe assumes, and it genuinely needs long soaking or hours of gentle cooking to go clear. Small pearl or quick-cooking tapioca reaches the same point in 15 to 30 minutes; soaking pearl tapioca in the milk overnight in the refrigerator cuts the stovetop time drastically.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature. A moderate oven, in the region of 325F, suits a baked custard; too hot an oven is the usual cause of the curdling the recipe warns about, and the meringue can be browned a little hotter afterwards.
- The hingeThis is a custard, not a pudding thickened by starch alone. Pull it when the centre still trembles and a knife inserted an inch from the edge comes out clean at about 175F to 180F internal. Carryover heat finishes it.
- Water bath"Set the pan in a pan of hot water" means a bain-marie: hot, not boiling, water reaching halfway up the sides of the baking dish. Use a 1 1/2-quart dish and set it on a folded towel in the outer pan to keep the base from overheating.
- TemperingThe cold milk and yolks go into hot tapioca, so add them gradually and stir constantly, or the yolks will set in threads before they ever reach the oven.
- Lemon rind"Grated yellow rind" means zest only, no white pith. A microplane over the sugar carries the oil through the whole custard.
- MeringueThree tablespoons of sugar to two whites is a soft meringue and is liable to weep if it stands. The recipe asks only that it be browned lightly, a matter of minutes in a moderate oven; it is best served the same day.
- YieldServes four to six. The fruit variation, made with water rather than milk, serves six and is closer to a chilled fruit pudding than a custard.