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Dessert

Apple and Sago Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pare and core enough apples to fit in your baking dish, then fill the cored apples with ground cinnamon and sugar.

Make the sago

  1. In a bowl, mix large spoonfuls of sago with a little cold water.

  2. Add boiling water to the sago mixture until the pudding dish is full.

  3. Stir continuously until the mixture begins to thicken.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sago mixture into the dish with the apples.

  2. Bake for four hours.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Apple + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 add moisture and fruity flavour to the pudding.
Sago
Starch that swells and thickens with hot water, giving the pudding its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelise slightly at the edges.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that pairs with the cooked apples.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sago thickens. Sago is starch, and its granules can clump or settle and stick to the bottom of the bowl as they heat. Stirring continuously spreads the heat evenly and keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, 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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