Boba pearls

Overview

Boba pearls are a popular topping for drinks in Asia and around the world, associated with the cultural phenomenon that is bubble tea/boba. They are made with tapioca powder.

The Portuguese had brought cassava to its colonies in southern Asia already, but tapioca pearls became really popular when cassava was brought into the Taiwanese and Vietnamese diet from South America by the Dutch East India Company who had South American tapioca. After this, tapioca spread across East and eastern Southeast Asia like never before, and it became a popular topping for chè (Vietnamese sweet soups), but, however, none of those pearls had the caramel-y, deep taste we love in our boba pearls. The pearls here were not the iconic golden color of tapioca pearls that we see in boba today, they were white or translucent.

Roughly in the 1950s, someone put Taiwanese black sugar syrup for some uncooked pearl shaped tapioca pearls to soak in, and the resulting topping was simply an addition to the existing tapioca pearl topping, but it became so popular as a topping in a lot of the chè and shaved iced desserts that it pretty much became its own topping, known in Taiwan as Hei Tang Zhen Zhu.

I am going to call the drink pearl milk tea in this entry to avoid confusion. Interestingly, however, the word we associate with the tapioca pearls we put in pearl milk tea in the US, Boba, came from Bo Ba, a Taiwanese slang word that roughly translates to"big breasts", and that turned into a name for jumbo tapioca pearls in Taiwan. Why that word, of all words associated with pearl milk tea, became the term that unknowing Americans associate this topping with, is unknown. It is probably because the tapioca pearls we put in bubble tea in the US and also most of Taiwan are a lot bigger than normal tapioca pearls. Also, maybe because Boba is easy to say, and I bet not many Americans at all knew what Boba really meant in the early days of pearl milk tea. It is all a little confusing.

Again, whether they are normal sized or Boba pearls, Hei Tang Zhen Zhu (black sugar tapioca pearls) are used in all sorts of dishes in Taiwan, not just in pearl milk tea. To better understand this, there is a Taiwanese slang word for the texture of not just boba pearls, but many components of Taiwanese cuisine. QQ means chewy, not slimy or hard, slightly firm on the outside and with a bouncy center. and it is scientifically proven that it is very satisfying to eat something that is QQ. QQ has existed for an extremely long time in Taiwan. There is a whole cuisine around QQ in Taiwan, and the feeling of QQ is basically what makes Boba pearls so comforting, although Boba pearls are a relatively modern addition to QQ cuisine. Boba was pretty much made for the Taiwanese palate.

If you want to try authentic Boba pearls in the West, there are options. In the United States and Europe, the black sugar syrup to flavor the pearls is sometimes substituted for brown sugar syrup, and also, but less so, in Taiwan. The easiest way to try black sugar tapioca pearls in the US is to buy them online, but it is still definitely worth trying it for its more complex flavor. Oh, what the heck, just try pearl milk tea today!

Sources & credits

• Some of the info on the history of Boba pearls is adapted from the Wikipedia entry on Cassava, which is licensed CC-BY-SA, like this entry.