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Dessert

A Sago Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and milk in a pot.

  3. Boil the mixture until thick, stirring carefully to prevent burning.

  4. Add the stick of cinnamon while the mixture is boiling.

  5. Once thickened, remove from heat.

  6. Stir in the fresh butter.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and egg whites with the sack.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs into the sago mixture.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

  4. Add the currants soaked in sack and rose-water.

  5. Stir over low heat until thick.

  6. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.

  7. Bake until set.

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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
Thickens the milk into a soft, pudding-like body as it cooks.
Eggs
Set the mixture when baked, giving it structure and a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the pudding set firm and light when baked.
Whole milk
Forms the liquid base that the sago swells in and cooks down.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pudding.
Currants
Add chewy bursts of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the sago while it boils. Starch-thickened mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pot, and burnt flavour spreads through the whole batch. Constant gentle stirring keeps heat even while the starch swells and thickens.

Swap the currant

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

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

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