Stephen Jorgensen, age 11, of Milford, Connecticut, for his question:
Where does tapioca come from?
In certain tropical regions, the tapioca plant grows bumper crops with almost no attention at all. The starchy stuff we use to make those delicious puddings comes from its roots. The plant will not grow in our temperate regions and we get most of our supplies from Brazil, the Malay Peninsula and Java. The same bushy plant produces several other very useful products.
Tapioca is a smooth and delicate starchy material, taken from the fat roots of a shrubby plant called the bitter cassava, alias the bitter manioc. It is widely cultivated in the tropics of Asia and South America, where starch from both the sweet and bitter cassava is a staple flour product. Cuttings are taken from older plants and set out in the ground. They quickly sprout thick fleshy roots and grow five to twelve feet tall.
At harvest time, the whole plant is pulled up, for the starchy food is in its fat roots. Some of the roots are four to five feet long and from three to nine inches in diameter. The root cluster from one plant may yield as much as ten pounds of pearly tapioca. However, though the growing plant does not demand a lot of hard work, extracting the little grains of tapioca is quite a chore.
The bitter cassava contains traces of prussic acid. Since this is a poisonous chemical, the roots are most carefully washed to make sure that none of it remains in the finished food product. After several rinses and testings, the fat roots are washed through a grinding machine and then shoved through a revolving sieve. The sieve separates the tough root fibers and after several such siftings the pulpy starch material drains into a vat.
The starchy stuff gets several more washings, and then it is spread out to dry. Much of the dry, lumpy material is ground up to make flour. The quota destined to become tapioca goes through more processing.
Moisture is added to the fine flour and the mixture is shaken in a sort of hammock. This time, as it dries, the starchy stuff forms pearly little pellets. These are screened and sorted for size, then dried some more in iron pans heated over charcoal fires.
After all this elaborate processing, the grains of tapioca are ready to be packaged and sent to market. Meantime some of the starch from the bitter cassava roots has been processed for other purposes. Some of the basic flour is used to make a fine powder called arrowroot, used to thick puddings and gravies. Some is used to make pasty glues.
The cassava is a member of the spurge plant family. Most likely it was taken to Asia from its native home in tropical South America. The fleshy roots contain milky juice and about 20 per cent starch. The slender stems bear large leaves, like spreading hands with three to seven fingers. In Brazil and other parts of tropical South America, in Malaya and west tropical Africa, the tapioca plant provides a staple, easily digested flour.