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Tapioca Cream
Mrs. Bendelari.
One teacup of tapioca, soaked over night in a pint of milk; in the morning add one quart more, and when boiled till the tapioca is clear add the yolks of three eggs, well beaten, with one cup of sugar. Beat the whites to a foam. Sweeten and flavour the whole with vanilla.
This pudding is better eaten cold.
A Victorian boiled tapioca custard, written for a cook who already knew that egg yolks must not be allowed to curdle. The two things worth pinning down are the type of tapioca and the temperature at which the yolks go in.
- Use pearl tapioca, not instantThe overnight soak tells you this is small pearl tapioca, the form a nineteenth-century grocer sold. Instant or minute tapioca will dissolve to glue and quick-cooking granules need no soaking at all; look for small (not large boba) pearls.
- A teacup and the milkA teacup in 1870s American receipts is smaller than a modern measuring cup; somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cup is the usual reckoning. The liquid is a pint for the soak plus a quart added in the morning, so six cups of milk in all.
- The hinge: temper, then hold below a simmerBeat the yolks with the sugar, whisk in a ladle or two of the hot tapioca milk to warm them, then return everything to the pot over low heat. Yolks set into visible curds above about 185F, so stir constantly and pull it off the heat once it coats a spoon (170-180F). It will not thicken further by boiling; it will only scramble.
- "Boiled till the tapioca is clear"That is the doneness cue and it is a good one: the pearls lose their opaque white centres and turn translucent. Over gentle heat with frequent stirring this takes 20-40 minutes depending on pearl size. Stir the bottom often, as tapioca settles and scorches.
- The whitesThe recipe leaves them uncooked, sweetened and folded through or heaped on top as a soft meringue. If that concerns you, use pasteurised egg whites, or fold the foam into the custard while it is still hot off the stove so it partly sets.
- Flavouring quantityNo amount is given; one to two teaspoons of vanilla extract suits six cups of milk. A split vanilla bean steeped in the milk during cooking gives a rounder flavour if you prefer it.
- Yield and servingAbout six cups finished, serving six to eight. It is right that it is better cold: the tapioca continues to absorb liquid as it chills, so what looks loose in the pot will be thick and spoonable after three or four hours in the refrigerator. Cover the surface if you dislike a skin.
Tapioca is starch extracted from cassava root, a South American plant carried across the tropics by Portuguese traders, and it reached northern kitchens in the nineteenth century as a cheap, bland, easily digested thickener sold by the grocer alongside sago, arrowroot and cornstarch. Puddings of this sort were staples of the American and Canadian middle-class table precisely because they stretched a little milk and three eggs into a dessert for eight, and because they were considered suitable for invalids and children. This page carries Mrs. Bendelari's name and her characteristically terse instructions: a recipe passed between people who all knew what "boiled till the tapioca is clear" looked like. The technique here, a starch-thickened custard finished with beaten whites, is the same one that produces the boxed tapioca puddings of the following century.