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Dessert

Swedish Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, currants, sugar, cinnamon, lemon rind, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Swedish Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Mash and strain the currants, adding water to make 2 quarts of liquid.

  2. Stir in sugar, cinnamon, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Boil until scum arises, then remove it.

Cook and set

  1. Add sago and cook until melted and clear.

  2. Pour into molds and set on ice.

  3. Serve with whipped 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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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
Thickens the liquid as it cooks and gives the pudding its clear, jelly-like set.
Currants
Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness and the base liquid for the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the currants and lemon.

The step that matters

Boil until scum arises, then remove it. Scum rising during boiling is mostly coagulated proteins and impurities from the fruit. Skimming it off keeps the liquid clear and gives a clean flavour and appearance.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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