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Tapioca and Apple Pudding
1 ounce tapioca 1 pint of milk 1 dessertspoon sugar 1/2 ounce butter 1/2 pint stewed apple A little grated nutmeg Wash the tapioca, and soak it in as much water--boiling--as will cover it, for an hour. Boil the milk and put in the sugar and butter. Place the apples at the bottom of a pie dish. Now pour away any water that has not been absorbed by the tapioca, and spread the tapioca over the apples. Pour in the sweetened milk, and grate a little nutmeg over all. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour.
A plain baked milk pudding in the English style, set over a layer of stewed apple. Nothing here is difficult, but the measures are Imperial and the oven wants watching.
- Imperial pintsThis is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz — 2 1/2 US cups of milk, and 1 1/4 cups of stewed apple. Using US pints will leave the pudding stiff.
- Tapioca by weightOne ounce of pearl tapioca is roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons. Use pearl or seed tapioca, not instant or minute tapioca, which is pre-gelatinised and will break down during the hour-long soak.
- DessertspoonA dessertspoon is 2 teaspoons in older British usage — so the pudding is barely sweetened, on the assumption the stewed apple carries sugar of its own. Sweeten the apple to taste before it goes in the dish.
- Half an ounce of butterAbout 1 tablespoon. It goes into the hot milk to enrich it, not into the dish.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). If the top browns before the custard has set, drop to 325F; a milk pudding baked too hard curdles and weeps around the edges.
- Pie dishHere a pie dish means a ceramic oval or round baking dish, not a pastry-lined tin. Depth matters — a deep narrow dish will be slower to set through in the hour given.
- The hingeDo not skip pouring off the unabsorbed soaking water, as the recipe directs. Excess water thins the milk and the pudding will be loose.
- ServingServes four.
Tapioca reached British kitchens as a cheap starch from cassava root, imported in quantity through the nineteenth century, and it slotted into the existing repertoire of baked milk puddings alongside rice, sago and semolina. Milk and a starch gave a filling course at low cost. Setting the pudding over a layer of stewed apple was one way to stretch it and use up fruit; a grating of nutmeg over anything baked in milk was a common English finish.