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Dessert

Boiled Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, eggs, sugar, and white wine, baked in a buttered basin.

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 ↓

Boiled Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sago base

  1. Boil sago in milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Pour over sponge biscuits or bread crumbs.

Assemble and steam

  1. Beat eggs with sugar and white wine.

  2. Mix all ingredients together.

  3. Pour into a buttered basin.

  4. Steam for 1 hour.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Its starch thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding body.
Eggs
They bind the mixture and set it as it steams.
Milk
It cooks the sago and keeps the pudding moist.
Sponge biscuits or bread crumbs
They soak up the liquid and give the pudding structure.
Sugar
It adds sweetness to the pudding.
White wine
It adds flavour and a little acidity to the custard.

The step that matters

Boiling the sago in milk. Sago starch only thickens fully when it is boiled in liquid. Cooking it for the full 10 minutes lets the grains soften and release starch, so the base thickens evenly rather than staying grainy.

“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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