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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A baked pudding made with sago, milk, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, lemon rind, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sago 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 the sago

  1. Rinse the sago in cold water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 1 quart of milk and ½ pint of sago, then stir over medium heat until it thickens like starch.

Make the pudding and bake

  1. Remove from heat and mix in 3 pints of milk, ½ cup sugar, 4 beaten eggs, grated nutmeg, salt, lemon rind, and raisins.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sago
Swells in hot milk and thickens the mixture into a starchy, pudding-like body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the sago swells in and the eggs set within.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory notes of the nutmeg and lemon.

The step that matters

Stir the sago over medium heat until it thickens. Sago must be cooked in the milk until its starch swells and thickens before the eggs are added. If it is undercooked, the pudding stays grainy or watery, and adding hot eggs to a thin base can cause uneven setting.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg, raisin. 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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