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Dessert

Sago Apple Pudding

A pudding made with sago and apples, baked with butter, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sago 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sago in tepid water with a pinch of salt for 1 hour.

  2. Pare, core, or quarter the apples and steam them until tender.

  3. Place the apples in a pudding dish.

Make and bake

  1. Boil and stir the sago until clear, adding water to thin it out.

  2. Pour the sago over the apples and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with butter and sugar, or cold with cream and sugar.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 thick, clear, pudding-like layer that sets as it cools.
Apples
Provide the fruit base and moisture that softens during steaming and baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the hot pudding at serving.

The step that matters

Boil and stir the sago until clear. Sago must be stirred while it cooks so the starch granules swell evenly and do not clump or stick. Cooking until it turns clear shows the starch is fully gelatinised, which gives a smooth texture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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