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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, cinnamon, butter, sugar, wine, eggs, and currants, baked in a pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sago in several waters.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the sago in milk with the cinnamon, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  2. When thick, remove the cinnamon and stir in the butter and sugar.

  3. Once cooled, add the wine, eggs, and plumped currants.

Bake

  1. Bake in a pastry shell until set.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sago
Starch that thickens the milk into a soft, set custard as it cooks.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the sago to form the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the richness of the butter and eggs.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.

The step that matters

Boiling the sago in milk. Sago starch settles and sticks to the bottom of the pan as it thickens, so it can scorch. Stirring frequently keeps the mixture moving and evenly heated while it becomes thick.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, butter, sugar, wine, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, butter, sugar, wine, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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