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Cream of Tapioca
Put a large slice of ham into a saucepan with one-fourth pound of butter, dust in one breakfastcupful of flour, and let the whole simmer for a few minutes; then pour in a little thick soup and stir it until the liquor is quite thick. Pour three quarts each of milk and good rich stock into a saucepan, strain the thickening into it, and add a blade of mace, one breakfast cupful of finely chopped onion, half that quantity each of carrots and turnips, also finely chopped, and finally a trifle more than one teacupful of tapioca. Boil very gently until the grains of tapioca are quite transparent, add one teaspoonful of minced parsley, salt and pepper to taste, pour the soup into a tureen, and serve.
A hotel-scale soup: as written it makes six quarts of liquid before the vegetables, enough for twenty or more. The workable version is a quarter of the recipe, and the tapioca is the part that decides whether it succeeds.
- Cut it downDivide everything by four for a household batch: about 3 cups milk, 3 cups stock, 1 oz butter, and proportionate reductions of the flour, onion and tapioca (roughly 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup chopped onion, 3 tablespoons tapioca, depending on how the old cup measures are read). Even quartered it serves five or six generously.
- The cup measuresThese were vessel measures, not standard ones. A breakfastcupful is generally reckoned at about a half-pint (8-10 fl oz) and a teacupful smaller, around 5-6 fl oz, so the full recipe calls for something on the order of a pint of flour and a little over a teacup of tapioca.
- "A little thick soup"This assumes a professional kitchen with a thickened stock standing by. Use a cup or so of the same stock you are about to add; the point is only to loosen the roux into a smooth paste before it meets the bulk liquid.
- Tapioca, and which kindSmall pearl tapioca is what is meant. It needs 15 to 25 minutes at a bare simmer and goes clear when done. Instant or "minute" tapioca thickens in two or three minutes and will turn this into glue if measured by the original volume.
- Keep it below a boilMilk-based soup with a flour roux and starch pearls scorches on the bottom the moment it catches. Low heat, a heavy pan, and stir across the base regularly; the tapioca sinks and sticks.
- The hamA large slice of ham is a flavouring, not an ingredient in the finished soup. Fish it out before straining or serving, or dice it small and return it.
- Strain the thickeningPassing the roux mixture into the milk and stock through a sieve is worth doing rather than skipping; it is the only insurance against flour lumps in a soup this pale.
- MaceA blade of mace is a piece of the dried lacy covering of nutmeg, sold whole in some spice shops. About 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace stands in for one blade; add it late, since ground mace loses its aroma with long cooking.
Oscar Tschirky's book, which dates to 1896, collects the working repertoire of the Waldorf kitchens at the close of the nineteenth century, and the cream soups in it are built the way a hotel built them: a large batch, a roux made in quantity, a ham hock or slice standing in for extra seasoning, and a starch to give body. Tapioca is the pearled starch of the cassava root, known in European commerce well before the nineteenth century and increasingly familiar in European and American kitchens through Brazil and the West Indies, and it was used as a thickener in puddings and soups alike. The name here is a period convention rather than a description: "cream of" in nineteenth-century hotel menus signalled a smooth, pale, thickened soup, and this one gets its richness from milk, butter and flour with no cream in sight.