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Dessert

Boiled Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, eggs, wine, nutmeg, and bread, served with melted butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Sago Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Clean and wash the sago.

  2. Boil the sago in the milk until soft.

  3. Let it cool, then mix in the egg yolks, egg whites, white wine, nutmeg, and grated bread.

  4. Sweeten to taste and divide into three portions.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil each pudding for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with a sauce of melted butter, sugar, and white wine.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 in milk, giving the pudding its soft, starchy body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the pudding as it sets.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding set with a softer structure.
Grated bread
Adds body and soaks up liquid, giving the pudding a firmer texture.
New milk
Cooks with the sago to form the creamy base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil each pudding for 30 minutes. Boiling must be steady and the pudding must be sealed or wrapped well so it does not take in water and turn soggy. Too little heat leaves the egg-thickened mixture underset, while too much can make it tough and rubbery.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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