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Sago and Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sago, apples, sugar, cinnamon, lemon flavoring, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

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

  2. Add cinnamon, sugar, and lemon flavoring.

  3. Slice the apples thinly and mix them with the sago.

  4. Once well boiled, add the butter.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake for 30 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. 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. Sugar + cinnamontop 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).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Swells and turns translucent when boiled, forming the soft, starchy body of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set of the pudding.
Apples
Add tartness and moisture, and hold some shape as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the apples.

The step that matters

Boil the sago until well cooked. Sago starch must be fully boiled until the grains turn translucent. Undercooked sago stays chalky and firm inside, so the pudding will not set evenly or taste smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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