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Dessert

Applr Sago Pudding

A pudding made with sago, apples, lemon, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Applr Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a pot, bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

  2. Add 1 cup of sago and stir.

  3. Slice 3 sour apples and the inside of 1 lemon thinly, then add the sliced apples and lemon to the pot.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a covered pudding dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) until it resembles clear jelly.

  2. Serve with cream.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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
Its starch swells and sets as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and clear, jelly-like texture.
Sour apples
Add tartness and fruity flavour, and soften into the pudding as it bakes.
Lemon
Adds sharp acidity and fresh citrus aroma that balances the sweetness of the dish.

The step that matters

Bake until the pudding turns clear. Sago's starch must fully swell and gelatinize to turn the pudding transparent. If it is pulled from the oven too early, the pudding stays cloudy and firm in the centre.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cream):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cream. 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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