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Apple Tapioca
3/4 cup tapioca 1 quart water Sugar 6 apples A little grated nutmeg Soak the tapioca and boil it in the water until clear, sweetening to taste. Pare and core the apples and place them in a baking
A plain baked fruit pudding of the sort that filled the back pages of every early twentieth-century cookbook. The text breaks off mid-sentence, but the method is standard: whole pared apples set in a dish, the clear sweetened tapioca poured over, and the whole baked until the fruit is tender.
- What kind of tapiocaIn a book of this period "tapioca" on its own most likely meant pearl tapioca, which wants a long soak — an hour in cold water at minimum, several hours or overnight for large pearls. Modern minute or instant tapioca will not behave the same way and needs no soaking; if you use it, follow the box for the liquid ratio rather than the 3/4 cup to a quart given here.
- "Until clear"This is the hinge of the recipe. The pearls must lose their opaque white centres entirely before the apples go in, or they will stay chalky through baking. Expect 15 to 20 minutes of gentle simmering with frequent stirring, since tapioca sticks and scorches readily.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. Half a cup of sugar to the quart of tapioca is a reasonable starting point, plus a spoonful in the apple cavities. Tart cooking apples will want more.
- OvenThe text breaks off before any oven instruction. A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading: bake covered until a skewer slides into the apples without resistance, roughly 45 minutes to an hour depending on size and variety.
- ApplesSix apples for a quart of liquid means a deep dish; a 9x13 pan or a 3-quart casserole holds them. Choose a variety that keeps its shape, such as Northern Spy, Granny Smith or Braeburn. Softer eating apples will collapse into the tapioca.
- CoringCore from the stem end without cutting through the base so each apple holds sugar and nutmeg. "Pare" means peel; peeled apples let the tapioca soak in, which is the point of the dish.
- Yield and servingSix apples, six servings. Serve warm with cream or a thin pouring custard — it is bland by design and wants the fat.
Tapioca reached American kitchens as a cheap imported starch from cassava root, and by the late nineteenth century it had become a common thickener for economical fruit puddings: it stretched a small amount of fruit, needed no eggs, and kept well in a dry pantry. Apple tapioca in particular sometimes appears under other names — apple sago is a genuine near-equivalent — and belongs to the same family as the baked apple: fruit, sugar, nutmeg, and whatever starch was in the house. The nutmeg is not decorative but conventional; it was often said to be the usual spice for apples in English and American cooking.