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Dessert

Baked Sago

A baked pudding made from sago, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, and currants, topped with a pastry border and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Baked Sago

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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sago in cold water, then strain it.

  2. Boil the sago in 1 pint of milk.

Make the filling

  1. Add sugar, butter, and egg yolks; mix well.

  2. Stir in raisins and currants.

Bake

  1. Transfer to a buttered dish with a pastry border.

  2. Beat the egg whites and spread on top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and soft texture.
Milk
Cooks with the sago to form the creamy base of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard base and help it set into a rich, smooth texture.
Egg whites
Beaten and spread on top, they puff and brown in the oven for a light topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites and spread on top. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks so they hold air and bake into a light, set topping rather than a flat, dense layer.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, raisin. 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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