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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, water, lemon peel, cinnamon, white wine, brown sugar, and eggs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sago base

  1. Boil sago in water with lemon peel and cinnamon until thick.

  2. Add white wine and sweeten with brown sugar.

  3. Remove lemon peel and cinnamon from the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  2. Mix everything together well.

  3. Bake in a dish with or without puff pastry at 350°F (175°C) 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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
Swells as it cooks, thickening the liquid into a soft, spoonable base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firmly as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding set with a tender, airy texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour that balances the sweetness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Egg proteins set with heat, so the pudding must bake until just firm. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking makes the eggs curdle and turn grainy.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, white wine, sugar, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, white wine, sugar, egg. 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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