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Butterscotch Tapioca
2 cups scalded milk 1/2 cup quick tapioca 1 egg 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup dark brown sugar 1 teaspoon butter 3/4 cup chopped nut meats 1 teaspoon vanilla Add tapioca to scalded milk, cook in double boiler till tapioca is clear. Mix sugar, salt and egg, beaten, with a small amount of the hot mixture, stirring well. Then add it to the remaining hot mixture, stirring and cooking till egg thickens. Add flavoring and chopped nuts. Cool in individual dishes. Serve with whipped cream.
A stovetop egg-and-tapioca pudding of the sort that filled the dessert slot on weekday menus. The whole thing hinges on tempering the egg properly, and on knowing which tapioca you have bought.
- Quick tapioca"Quick" tapioca is what is now sold as minute or instant tapioca — the fine granulated kind, not the pearls. Large pearl tapioca needs soaking and far longer cooking and will not behave the same way in this quantity of milk.
- Scalded milkBring the milk just to the point where bubbles form at the edge, around 180F, then use it. Scalding is usually explained as a safeguard for raw milk; with pasteurised milk its main practical effect here is to give the tapioca a head start on hydrating.
- Double boilerThe water in the lower pan should simmer, not boil hard, and should not touch the upper pan. Expect roughly 15 minutes for the granules to turn from white to translucent. Direct heat will scorch the milk and set the egg into threads.
- Tempering the eggThis is the step that decides the texture. Beat the egg with the sugar and salt, stir in a ladle of the hot tapioca a spoonful at a time, then return it all to the pan. Cook only until it visibly thickens — a minute or two — and take it off the heat before any hint of a boil.
- The butterThe butter is listed but never assigned a moment in the method. Stir it in off the heat with the vanilla, where it will smooth the pudding and reinforce the butterscotch flavour.
- Dark brown sugarThe butterscotch character comes largely from the molasses in the sugar, with the butter contributing as well, so use a genuinely dark brown sugar. Light brown will give a much fainter butterscotch note.
- NutsThe recipe specifies only 'nut meats'; walnuts or pecans are the likeliest reading. Adding them while the pudding is still hot softens them; fold in half and scatter the rest on top at serving if you want some crunch.
- Cooling and yieldFills about four to six small dishes. Press plastic wrap or waxed paper against the surface while cooling to prevent a skin, and note that tapioca stiffens considerably as it chills — it should look slightly loose when you dish it up.
Tapioca, the starch washed from cassava root, reached American kitchens in bulk in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the pre-granulated "minute" style that this recipe assumes made it a staple of the cheap milk pudding. Butterscotch — brown sugar and butter, generally traced to nineteenth-century Yorkshire confectionery — became a standard American flavouring for such puddings, a way to make a plain custard taste like a sweet shop without chocolate or fruit. Its place in a book of planned menus is telling: a dessert built from milk, one egg and pantry sugar was exactly what a rotating menu scheme needed, since it cost little, used no oven, and could be made ahead and left to set until dinner.