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Peach Tapioca
Soak one-half cup of granulated tapioca in one and one-half cups of cold water over night. In the morning add two cups of boiling water and a little salt, and let it boil five minutes. Then put into a double boiler and cook until clear. Take the remnants of a can of peaches-there should be at least a cup, and if there is a pit or two all the better. Add a little more sugar, and simmer until the syrup is somewhat thickened, and stir into the cleared tapioca. Remove from the fire, cool, and pour into a glass dish. Serve with sweetened cream.
A thrift dessert built around the last of a can of peaches and its syrup. Everything hinges on cooking the tapioca until it is genuinely translucent, with no white centers left in the grains.
- Granulated tapiocaThis is not instant or minute tapioca, which is precooked and needs no soaking. Look for small pearl tapioca; it wants the overnight soak in the 1 1/2 cups cold water and will swell considerably. If all you have is instant, skip this recipe rather than adapting it, since the liquid ratios will not hold.
- "Cook until clear"The real doneness test. Over the double boiler this takes 20 to 40 minutes depending on pearl size; stir occasionally and keep going until each grain is glassy through the middle. Undercooked tapioca stays chalky and gritty no matter how long it chills.
- Double boilerUse a heatproof bowl over an inch of simmering water, not touching it. Direct heat at this stage can scorch the starch.
- The peach syrupCanned peaches today are often packed in juice or light syrup rather than the heavier syrup of the period, so "a little more sugar" may mean a couple of tablespoons. Simmer the fruit and syrup until the syrup is somewhat thickened, as the recipe directs, before stirring it into the tapioca.
- About the pitsPeach stones were once added for a faint almond note, which comes from amygdalin in the kernel, a cyanogenic compound also responsible for the flavor of bitter almonds. Whole, uncracked stones simmered briefly and then removed contribute very little, but the modern practice is simply to omit them; never crack a stone to use the kernel.
- Setting upThe mixture thickens substantially as it cools. Pour it into the glass dish while still pourable, cover the surface to prevent a skin, and chill at least 2 hours.
- Sweetened creamHeavy cream with a spoonful of sugar, poured over rather than whipped. A lighter cream may suit better if the pudding is already quite sweet.
- YieldServes four to six as written. It does not keep well past a day; the tapioca continues to stiffen and weep.
Tapioca, the washed starch of the cassava root, arrived in American kitchens through the West Indies trade and by the late nineteenth century was a pantry staple sold in coarse pearl and fine granulated grades. It was valued precisely for what this recipe asks of it: it thickens without eggs or much milk, it is cheap, and it takes on whatever fruit and syrup it is given. A can of peaches opened for one meal left syrup and a few slices behind, and both could be put to use again. The instruction that a stray pit is "all the better" reflects a once-common taste for a bitter-almond edge in fruit desserts, the same impulse behind the noyau and ratafia flavorings of older cookery.