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Dessert

Eggs, Cream, and Extract of Beef

A pudding made from pearl sago, cream, egg yolks, and beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and tea work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 417 recipes. Both carry 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan, which smells thiamin, meat. The science ↓

Eggs, Cream, and Extract of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Wash the sago until the water runs clear.

  2. Stir the sago in ½ cup of water until tender and thick.

Finish the pudding

  1. Mix in ½ cup of cream and the yolks of 4 eggs.

  2. Combine the mixture with 1 quart of boiling beef tea.

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. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  2. Cream + teatop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cream + beeftop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Pearl sago
Swells as it cooks, thickening the pudding and giving it its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set into a smooth, custard-like texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the pudding.
Beef tea
Forms the main liquid and gives the pudding its savory flavor.

The step that matters

Combining the yolks and cream with the boiling beef tea. Egg yolks can scramble or curdle when hit by very hot liquid. Stirring the yolks and cream into the thickened sago first, then adding the hot beef tea gradually while stirring, keeps the custard smooth.

“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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