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Dessert

Royal Sago Pudding

A baked pudding made from sago, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and flavored with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

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.

  2. Place the sago in a saucepan with the milk.

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

Make the pudding

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

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from the oven and let cool.

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

  3. Spread jam over the pudding.

  4. Top the pudding with the frosting.

  5. Return to the oven for 2 minutes to lightly brown.

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 liquid and thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the sago absorbs and adds richness and softness.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the pudding while adding richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar into a light foam that adds lift to the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep it moist.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Yolks can scramble into lumps if they meet very hot mixture directly. Stirring them in gently while the mixture is hot but not boiling keeps the pudding smooth and evenly set.

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.

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