Skip to main content
Dessert

Royal Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and topped with jam and frothy frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Royal Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the sago and place it in a saucepan with the milk.

  2. Let it stand in boiling water until the sago swells.

  3. Stir in the butter, sugar, and flavoring while hot.

  4. Once cool, add the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and let the pudding cool.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar until frothy.

  2. Spread jam over the pudding.

  3. Top the pudding with the frothy frosting.

  4. Return to the oven for 2 minutes to brown slightly.

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 + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Swells in hot liquid and thickens the pudding as it sets, giving it body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the sago absorbs, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Egg yolks
Set into the custard as it bakes, adding richness and structure.
Egg whites
Whipped with powdered sugar into a light foam that forms the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks after the mixture cools. Beaten yolks added to a very hot mixture can scramble and turn grainy. Letting the mixture cool first lets the yolks blend smoothly and set evenly as the pudding bakes.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, 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.

More sago pudding recipes

Apple 54Currant 3 See all 218 →

You might also like

Raspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesRaspberry CreamRaspberry Cream82 recipesRaspberry IceRaspberry Ice29 recipesRaspberry Ice CreamRaspberry Ice Cream24 recipes