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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, currants, and raisins, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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. Soak the sago in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the soaked sago in 1 quart of milk until soft.

  2. Stir in the butter, eggs, sugar, currants, and raisins.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

Bake

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

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Swells and softens in milk to give the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Milk
Cooks with the sago to form the creamy liquid base of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like firmness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown its surface as it bakes.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the sago until soft. Sago must be fully cooked in the milk before baking, because starch granules only swell and soften fully once heated, and undercooked sago stays firm and gritty in the finished pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

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