Tapioca
Boil the pearl tapioca (not the lump kind) as you do rice. When cool, sweeten to the taste and season with nutmeg. Pour rich cream over it and stir it to make it smooth. Put one pint cream to two tablespoonfuls before boiling.--Mrs.
A cold tapioca cream, written for cooks who already knew how to boil rice and needed only the proportions. The numbers are there, but stated back to front.
- The ratio, read correctlyThe last line means two tablespoonfuls of dry pearl tapioca measured before boiling, finished with a pint (2 cups) of cream. That is a loose, pourable cream rather than a spoon-standing pudding.
- Pearl, not lumpPearl tapioca is starch worked into small round grains and dried; the "lump kind" was the starch in coarse irregular lumps, which generally called for long soaking before cooking. Modern small pearl tapioca is the nearest equivalent, though some brands still ask for a soak — check the packet. Do not substitute instant or minute tapioca, which is pre-gelatinised and will thicken almost at once.
- "As you do rice"Simmer the pearls in plenty of water, stirring now and then to keep them from sinking and welding, until each grain is clear through with no white core — roughly 15 minutes for small pearl, longer for large. Drain and rinse briefly in cold water to stop the cooking and wash off loose starch.
- Cool before sweeteningSweeten and spice once the tapioca is cool, as the recipe directs; nutmeg keeps more of its aroma when it is not added over heat. Grate the nutmeg fresh — pre-ground is a different, flatter spice.
- Cream then and nowNineteenth-century "rich cream" was skimmed from standing milk and its richness varied a good deal from dairy to dairy, often falling short of modern heavy cream. Heavy cream alone makes this very rich; half heavy cream and half whole milk may be closer to what the writer poured.
- Stirring smoothCooked tapioca stiffens into a solid mass as it cools. Break it up with a fork or spoon before the cream goes in, then stir — otherwise you get lumps of set starch floating in cream.
- YieldTwo tablespoons of dry tapioca swells to well under a cup cooked; with a pint of cream this serves four in small glasses or cups. Chill a couple of hours; it will thicken further overnight.
Tapioca is the washed starch of cassava, a South American root that reached European and American kitchens as a manufactured import — by the 1870s it was sold already dried into flake, lump or pearl. The pearl form, made by forcing moist starch through sieves and drying the grains, was the household standard. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, prints scores of such receipts and assumes throughout that the reader has already mastered the basic operations; hence "boil it as you do rice," with no time, no water quantity and no explanation. Cassava root is dangerous raw, containing cyanogenic compounds, but the grating, pressing and heating that produce commercial tapioca starch remove them — which is why the recipe treats the pearls as an inert pantry staple, no different from sago or rice.