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Tapioca Custard
3 tablespoons tapioca 1 quart milk Yolks of 3 eggs 4 tablespoons powdered sugar Whites of 3 eggs Pinch of salt 1 teaspoon vanilla Soak the tapioca over night; drain and put over the fire in the milk; boil slowly half an hour or until the tapioca is transparent. Pour this mixture on the yolks, well beaten with the sugar; and boil all until a custard is formed. Remove from the fire; add the beaten whites, salt and flavoring. Lemon juice may be substituted for the vanilla if preferred.
A soft stirred custard thickened with pearl tapioca, from the era when tapioca came as hard beads that had to be soaked overnight. Most of the adjustments below concern the tapioca itself and the temperature at which egg custard sets.
- Which tapiocaThe overnight soak tells you this is pearl tapioca, not the pre-cooked "minute" or instant granules sold today. Small pearl tapioca still wants several hours in cold water; instant tapioca needs no soaking at all and will dissolve into paste if treated this way.
- "Over the fire" means a double boiler"Over the fire" means direct heat -- Milk and tapioca left on direct heat for half an hour will scorch on the bottom and the starch will catch. Use a heavy pan over low heat with frequent stirring, or set a bowl over simmering water and accept a longer cooking time.
- The hinge: do not actually boil the custard"Boil all until a custard is formed" is period shorthand for cooking the egg yolks until they thicken. Egg yolk sets around 160-170F and curdles above about 180F; take it off when it coats a spoon and holds a clean line when you draw a finger through it.
- Tempering the yolksPouring a quart of near-boiling milk onto three beaten yolks all at once will scramble them. Add a cupful first, whisking, then return the thinned yolks to the pan.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period powdered sugar usually means finely ground granulated sugar, closer to today's caster or superfine, not confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch. Ordinary granulated works here since it dissolves in the hot milk.
- The beaten whitesThree whites folded into hot custard off the heat are warmed but not reliably cooked through. If that matters in your household, use pasteurised whites, or spoon the meringue over the top and brown it in a 350F oven for eight to ten minutes.
- Lemon juiceAcid added to a hot dairy custard can cause it to break. Add lemon juice only after the custard has cooled somewhat, and use no more than a teaspoon or two.
- YieldA quart of milk with three eggs makes roughly six servings. Chill at least three hours; the tapioca continues to firm as it cools.
Tapioca is starch extracted from the cassava root, a South American plant carried by Portuguese traders to Africa and Asia, and it reached nineteenth-century American and British kitchens as small hard pearls sold by the pound at the grocer. Because it thickens without flour and carries dairy well, it became a fixture of the invalid-and-nursery end of the dessert repertoire alongside sago, arrowroot and cornstarch blancmange, and cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s routinely give a whole cluster of tapioca puddings. The overnight soak here dates the recipe, though only loosely: pre-gelatinised quick-cooking tapioca, which removed that step entirely, is generally said to have spread in the earlier twentieth century, but pearl tapioca and its soak persisted in cookbooks long afterwards. Combining the tapioca with a stirred egg custard, rather than baking it, produces what period books call a boiled custard, served cold in glasses or a deep dish with the whites piled on top.