Cooking Through HSP: Tapioca Pudding

Welcome to Cooking Through HSP! To many, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is best known for its Revolutionary War-era documents and extensive genealogy collection. However, the HSP archives holds many more historical gems. This four-part series will focus on American food through history as found in HSP’s collections. 

My name is Madison Jordan, and I’m a junior at Simmons University majoring in Information Technology. I spent last summer interning at HSP in the Learning & Engagement department with Brianna Quade. My main project for this internship was a series of four blog posts on American food history spanning almost a hundred-year period. In each post I examine the background of one source, its historical context, and review how the historical context had an effect on the cooking process. Additionally, I cooked and reviewed a recipe from each book, while considering how it fit into the lives of the people who were making it when the document was first published.

I was interested in doing this project because I have a passion for food history. I love looking at old cookbooks and the way that everyday people have worked, eaten, and lived their everyday lives throughout history. It’s an interest that I’ve had for a long time, and I’ve been incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to dive deeper into this subject and get so close to the materials while completing this project.

Throughout this project, I will be looking at American culture through food. Food history is an aspect of history that transcends time and locations. Studying one war, for example, is through one time period. Food history, on the other hand, has always happened and will always continue to happen. The way that people eat reflects the way that they live, whether it’s through the time they have to cook or the ingredients they have access to, and this series seeks to reflect that within HSP’s shelves. 

This post highlights Philadelphia Cook Book, written by Sara Tyson Rorer and published in 1886. While Philadelphia is known for its signature foods such as cheesesteaks or soft pretzels, in 1886, people weren’t eating those. Sara Tyson Rorer calls the period’s “peculiar dishes” of Philadelphia “known not only in this country but abroad as well”. 

S.T. Rorer, Philadelphia Cook Book, 1886. Vt.3698. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Sara Tyson Rorer has often been called “America’s first dietitian”. She spent most of her life in Pennsylvania-- born in Bucks County in 1849, but grew up in New York before returning to Pennsylvania as a young adult. Her cooking career began in Philadelphia with classes at the New Century Club, and she eventually started the Philadelphia Cooking School and wrote multiple cookbooks, some of which are available to view at HSP. 

Philadelphia Cook Book was written to fulfill the need that Rorer saw in the cookbook market for detailed instructions-- she mentions how she had “often detected an obscurity in directions,” and that the recipes in this book were intended to be “so plain” that a beginner could make any of the dishes. One frequent problem in historical culinary research is the lack of detail. Many implied directions are not clear to us in the modern age, which makes this book’s detailed instructions an invaluable resource for culinary history of the era.

While the introduction states that these recipes are clear enough for any beginner chef, mentioning how Rorer’s culinary students completed them successfully, the chapter titled To Cooks indicates the intended audience was household servants. It opens with “On first going into a new family, make friends with the other servants,” along with instructing the reader to “receive [their] orders attentively.” Additionally, there are examples of menus to be served for a family throughout the day. The time-intensive recipes included in Philadelphia Cook Book reflect that the people making the recipes weren’t leaving to go to work or school-- they were dedicated to cooking, along with other household needs. 

The recipe that I chose to make from this book was for tapioca pudding (shown below). 

S.T. Rorer, Philadelphia Cook Book, 1886. Vt.3698. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

An interesting historical distinction from this recipe is the instruction calling for a “moderate oven.” At the time, ovens didn’t have temperature control. Moderate was supposed to be an understood instruction, based on the capacities of the ovens that were being used at the time. Blackbird Cookbooks suggests that a moderate oven would be around 350 degrees Fahrenheit, so that’s what I used for this recipe. I also beat the mixture together by hand. 

This recipe was rather simple, and more hands-off than pudding recipes that I’ve made in the  past. Most puddings have involved stirring as they cook on a stovetop, but this just calls for the oven. The concept of tempering eggs (the process of slowly combining a heated milk mixture with raw eggs in order to cook the eggs and milk together without the eggs curdling) is not seen in any of this book’s recipes. Without this process, the eggs in the pudding curdled in the oven when I made it, affecting the texture. It’s not known whether that’s the texture that happened when it was made at the time-- these recipes don’t explain how the dish was supposed to taste or the texture it was supposed to have, because these were implied to be common dishes that the average reader already knew of. Even though Rorer called all of these recipes “plain”, and it’s true that the instructions are all very clear, there’s still elements that a modern-day reader can’t know. We don’t know how these recipes were supposed to taste, and we don’t know things like exact temperatures or where materials were sourced. However, it still tasted good, and was overall very enjoyable! If you decide to try it, we’d love to hear about your experience. 

From left to right; the tapioca soaking in milk; the eggs and sugar together; the pudding immediately out of the oven; the pudding after being stirred.

Studying the everyday life of people throughout history from their food helps us connect with the way that they lived and the environment they lived in, no matter how far we are from the time that they were written. Through cooking this recipe, I was able to experience an authentic historical treat, the same way that Philadelphians were over a hundred years ago, and experience the uncertainty of one of Sarah Tyson Rorer’s students testing out her recipes! Tune in next week for a new recipe!