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Consomme Tapioca
Prepare a consomme. Strain it into a saucepan, and as soon as it comes to a boil add four ounces thoroughly washed tapioca. Mix well, boil for ten minutes, pour into a hot tureen and serve.
A garnished clear soup in the classical French manner, where the name of the soup is simply the name of whatever is suspended in it. The whole point is a broth that stays transparent, so everything below serves that end.
- Quantity is unstatedThe original assumes a stockpot of consommـ already made. Four ounces of tapioca suits something on the order of two quarts of finished broth, though period ratios vary; with much less liquid the soup will turn thick and starchy.
- Which tapiocaUse small pearl tapioca or the granulated "seed" type sold for soups, not instant tapioca and not the large boba pearls, which need far longer than ten minutes and shed a great deal of starch.
- Washing matters"Thoroughly washed" is the hinge. Rinsing in several changes of cold water carries off loose surface starch; skip it and the consommé you clarified so carefully turns cloudy the moment the tapioca goes in.
- Keep the boil gentleThe original says to boil for ten minutes, but a hard rolling boil batters the grains and clouds the broth; a bare simmer with a stir once or twice is safer, cooking until the pearls are translucent.
- The consommé itselfConsommé here means stock clarified with an egg-white and lean-meat raft, then strained through a cloth. A good commercial beef or chicken broth reduced and clarified will stand in, but plain unclarified stock defeats the dish.
- Hold and serveTapioca keeps swelling as it sits and will absorb broth on standing, so cook it just before service, and warm the tureen and bowls properly since a clear soup loses heat fast.
- YieldDepends on the volume of consommـ used, which the recipe does not state; as a first course, allow roughly a cup a head.
Classical French kitchens treated consommé as a base rather than a finished dish: the broth was clarified once and then named for its garnish, so a single pot might go out as consommé julienne, consommé royale, consommé vermicelle or, as here, consommé tapioca. Tapioca itself is starch washed from the root of cassava, a South American plant carried by Portuguese traders into Africa and Asia; it had reached European and American kitchens as a cheap, bland, imported starch used mainly for puddings and invalid cookery. Its appearance in the soup course reflects a period taste for clear broths carrying a small, decorative, easily digested garnish, and for the near-transparent look of cooked pearls suspended in amber stock.