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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made with sago, currants, milk, butter, powdered sugar, eggs, and spices.

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 ↓

Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick, wash, and dry the currants.

  2. Soak the sago in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the sago in milk until soft.

  2. Stir in butter and powdered sugar alternately, then let cool.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then gradually stir them into the mixture.

  4. Add spices and dredged currants, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs set during baking, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Sago
Swells and softens in hot milk, thickening the mixture and giving it a tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sago cooks in and the eggs set into.
Butter
Adds fat, richness, and a smooth mouthfeel to the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves smoothly into the warm mixture.
Currants
Add small pockets of chewy sweetness and fruity flavour throughout.

The step that matters

Gradually stirring the beaten eggs into the mixture. Adding eggs all at once to hot mixture can scramble them into lumps. Adding them gradually, after the mixture has cooled, lets the eggs blend in evenly so the pudding bakes smooth.

Swap the currant

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. Currantthe 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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