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Dessert

A Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, butter, eggs, and sweet wine, flavored with cinnamon and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

A Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Wash the sago in three or four hot waters.

  2. Combine the sago with the milk and bring to a boil until thick, stirring carefully to prevent burning. Add the cinnamon stick while heating.

  3. Remove from heat. Stir in the butter.

Make the filling

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and egg whites with the sack.

  2. Mix the egg mixture with the sago and sweeten to taste.

  3. Add the currants that have been washed, rubbed, and soaked in sack and rose water.

  4. Stir the mixture over low heat until thickened.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Bake until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sago
Forms the body of the pudding as its starch thickens when boiled with milk.
Eggs
Set the mixture when heated, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the sago swells in and forms the base of the custard.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the sago while it boils and thickens. Sago starch settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan quickly, so constant gentle stirring prevents burning and keeps the texture even.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, butter, egg, wine, rose. 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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