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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, eggs, butter, currants, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the sago, then cover it with warm water and let it soak in a warm place for 3 hours.

  2. Wash, pick, and dry the currants, then sift flour over them.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the soaked sago in the milk until fully incorporated.

  2. Add the butter to the mixture and let it cool.

  3. Beat the eggs and stir them into the cooled milk mixture, then add sugar, currants, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Bake

  1. Butter a deep dish, pour in the mixture, and bake.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Starch that swells and thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Milk
Liquid base that the sago cooks in, forming the creamy body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the cooled milk mixture. Eggs scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Letting the mixture cool after adding the butter lets the eggs blend smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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