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Dessert

Steamed Sago Pudding

A steamed pudding made from sago, milk, butter, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sago mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, sago, butter, sugar, and lemon rind, then boil for 13.5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and work in the eggs.

Prepare the mold

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and sugar.

  2. Butter a mold and dust it with the flour and sugar mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the sago mixture into the mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Swells in the hot milk and sets into the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a firmer structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the sago absorbs and cooks in, giving a soft, moist texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavor the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the sago mixture into the mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 1 hour.. Steaming gently cooks the eggs and sago without drying the pudding. Covering the mold with buttered paper traps moisture and keeps the surface from crusting.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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