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Tapioca Jelly
1 quart of raspberry or other fruit juice strained. 1 cupful of water. 12 ounces of sugar. 4 ounces of tapioca.
Crush the tapioca, if the large kind, by rolling it, and steep it 2 hours in the water and some of the fruit juice. Boil the rest of the raspberry juice with the sugar in it, add the steeped tapioca and let simmer 15 minutes or more. Put it in cups or other molds and serve it cold with a spoonful of yolk of egg custard in the saucer, or with whipped cream. This can a so be made with water and flavorings, as directed for corn starch jelly.
A fruit-juice gel set with tapioca rather than gelatin, and it hinges entirely on cooking the starch until it is fully translucent. Undercooked pearls stay white and chalky in the middle and the jelly will not set clean.
- Which tapiocaThe recipe assumes pearl tapioca, and "the large kind" means the big pea-sized pearls that were crushed with a rolling pin to speed hydration. Small pearl tapioca needs no crushing; instant or "minute" tapioca is pre-gelatinized and will thicken far faster and more thickly, so it is not a straight substitute here.
- Weights to volumes12 ounces of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups. Four ounces of pearl tapioca is roughly 2/3 cup. A quart of juice is 4 cups; the cupful of water is used only as part of the soaking liquid, not added on top.
- The soak mattersTwo hours in water and some of the juice is not optional padding. Pearls that go into hot syrup dry stay hard at the center no matter how long they simmer, and the outside dissolves into cloudy slime first.
- Judging donenessFifteen minutes is a floor, not a target. Simmer gently, stirring, until every pearl is clear through with no white speck; large pearls can take 25 to 30 minutes. Keep the heat low, since a hard boil breaks the pearls down and dulls fresh fruit juice.
- Set and unmoldingTapioca sets by starch, not gelatin, so it firms as it cools and will not remelt in a warm room. Rinsing the molds with cold water before filling should help it slip out; chill several hours until firm.
- Strain the juice properlyRaspberry juice should be strained through a fine sieve or cloth to remove seeds and pulp. Pulp left in makes the finished jelly grainy against the smooth pearls.
- The custard in the saucerThe yolk custard served alongside is a thin stirred sauce, essentially a crème anglaise. Cook it to 170–175F over low heat until it coats a spoon, then chill; do not serve the yolks uncooked.
- YieldAbout 5 cups of finished jelly, filling six to eight teacup molds.
Tapioca is cassava starch, washed out of the root of a South American plant and dried into pearls, and it reached nineteenth-century American and British kitchens as a colonial import alongside sago and arrowroot. Those three starches were the standard "invalid cookery" thickeners of the period, considered light and easily digested, which is why they turn up so often in puddings and jellies meant for children and convalescents. Setting a fruit juice with a starch rather than with gelatin or isinglass gave a different result: no calf's foot to boil down, no sheet gelatin to test, and a jelly that holds its shape on a warm sideboard. The closing note points back to a corn starch jelly, teaching a method once and then listing the starches that could be swapped into it.