When: June 28
Tapioca pudding is the American version of a preparation made from cassava starch — a root native to South America that feeds hundreds of millions of people globally. The little pearls in the pudding are processed cassava starch. Understanding the ingredient changes how you think about the dessert.
Tapioca is extracted from cassava — one of the world's most important staple crops — and most people have no idea where it comes from.
Cassava feeds approximately 800 million people. It grows in poor soil, survives drought, and can be left in the ground for years without spoiling — a caloric safety net for the tropical world. In West Africa it's fufu, pounded and served with soup. In Brazil it's manioc flour on every table. In Southeast Asia it's tapioca pearls in pudding, in crispy chips, in flatbreads. No other crop is as deeply integrated into the food security of the developing tropics. Cassava (Manihot esculenta) was domesticated approximately 8,000–10,000 years ago in the Amazon basin, making it one of the oldest cultivated crops in the Americas. Indigenous peoples carried it throughout tropical South America, and Portuguese traders spread it to Africa and Asia in the 16th century — one of the most consequential botanical transfers in history, because cassava's drought tolerance made it viable in regions where other staple crops failed. Today it's the third-largest carbohydrate source in the tropics, after rice...