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Dessert

Apple and Sago Pudding

A baked apple pudding with sago pearls, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon 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 ↓

Apple and Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Peel and core enough apples to fit in your baking dish.

  2. Fill the cavities of the cored apples with ground cinnamon and sugar.

  3. For each apple, mix 2 teaspoons of sago with a little cold water.

Make the sago

  1. Add boiling water to the sago mixture until it fills the pudding dish.

  2. Stir continuously until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. Cover and let it stand for about two hours until the sago swells.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the baking dish and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  2. Serve with sugar and 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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Apples
Soften during baking and release juices that moisten the pudding.
Sago
Swells in water and thickens the mixture as its starch sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling and sweetens the apples as they bake.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the apples in the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring and standing the sago. Sago starch must be stirred as it thickens and then given time to swell fully. Under-swollen sago stays firm and grainy, so the pudding turns out uneven in texture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar. 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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