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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks, frothy egg whites, and topped with jelly or jam.

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

Make the pudding

  1. Wash the sago well and place it in a quart of milk.

  2. Let it stand in a frying kettle in boiling water until well swelled.

  3. While hot, add the butter and white sugar.

  4. When cool, mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  5. Bake for 45 minutes and let cool.

Frost and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites to a froth with the sugar.

  2. Spread the pudding with jelly or jam, then top with the frosting and brown lightly.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Swells in hot milk to give the pudding its body and soft, tender texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, sliceable pudding when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the frosting brown lightly.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a froth that becomes the topping and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the sago swell fully before adding the butter and sugar. Sago must absorb the hot milk until fully swollen and tender; if it is undercooked, it stays firm and grainy in the finished pudding.

“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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