Skip to main content
Dessert

Sago and Apple Pudding

A pudding made from sago, apples, cinnamon, sugar, lemon flavoring, and butter, baked after boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Sago and Apple 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.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the sago in a pot of boiling water until cooked.

  2. Add the cinnamon sticks, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

  3. Mix in the thinly sliced apples.

  4. Stir in the butter after the sago is well boiled.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an 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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Forms the starchy body of the pudding as it cooks and thickens in water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Apples
Add fruit flavour and moisture, softening as the pudding bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the sago until fully cooked. Sago pearls contain hard starch cores that stay opaque and chewy if not boiled long enough. Thorough cooking gelatinises the starch so the pudding turns soft and translucent before baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, apple, butter. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes