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Peach Manioca Pudding
Into two cups of milk stir four tablespoons of manioca, and let the mixture come to a boil. Then add two beaten eggs, two tablespoons of sugar, two additional cups of milk, and a bit of lemon peel for flavoring, which will be better if grated. Pare and slice a dozen peaches, put them into a buttered pudding dish, sprinkle with sugar, and over them pour the manioca mixture, baking till done.-Mrs E. C. Gardner.
A milk-and-tapioca custard poured over sliced fresh peaches and baked. The original leaves out oven temperature, baking time and yield, all of which are easy enough to supply.
- Manioca is tapioca"Manioca" is manioc — cassava — starch, sold today as tapioca. Use quick-cooking granulated tapioca; four tablespoons in two cups of milk gives a loose custard once the second two cups go in. Large pearl tapioca will not soften in this timing and would need soaking first.
- Cook the starch firstThe hinge is the initial boil: the tapioca should be translucent and thickened in the first two cups of milk before anything else joins it. Granules that go into the dish still white and chalky can stay gritty through baking, since the cold milk and eggs drop the temperature below gelatinisation.
- Temper the eggsTwo beaten eggs stirred straight into boiling starch will scramble. Slacken them with a ladle of the hot mixture, then return that to the pan off the heat, and add the cold milk after.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. In a buttered two-quart dish, figure 45 to 60 minutes — "done" means the custard is set at the edges with a slight wobble at the centre and the peaches are tender.
- A dozen peachesA dozen of today's large supermarket freestones would likely swamp the custard. About two pounds, or five or six medium peaches, fills a two-quart dish in a single dense layer. Pare them by blanching 30 seconds and slipping the skins.
- Lemon peelGrated zest, as the recipe prefers, means about a teaspoon from one lemon — no white pith. Strips of peel are the alternative, steeped in the hot milk and then fished out.
- SugarTwo tablespoons in the custard plus a sprinkle over the fruit is restrained by modern standards, which suits ripe peaches. With underripe or out-of-season fruit, closer to a quarter cup over the peaches is reasonable.
- YieldSix to eight servings. Good warm rather than hot; the custard firms as it stands.
Tapioca reached American kitchens as an imported colonial starch, pressed and dried from the roots of cassava, and by the late nineteenth century it had joined sago, arrowroot and cornstarch in the standard rank of thickeners a housekeeper kept on hand for puddings and invalid cookery. The spelling "manioca" here points back to the plant's name — manioc — rather than to the Tupi-derived tipi'oka that named the processed starch. The dish itself belongs to the large family of American fruit-and-starch baked puddings that made a dessert from whatever was ripe in quantity, which in late summer meant peaches by the basket.