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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A sweet pudding made from sago, milk, eggs, cream, and spices, baked in a pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Wash and pick the sago clean.

  2. Place the sago in water and bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Drain the water from the sago.

Make the custard

  1. Add the new milk and a pinch of salt to the sago.

  2. Add cinnamon and boil until thick.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Stir in the cream and beaten eggs, adding sugar to taste.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pastry-lined dish.

  3. Optionally add bread crumbs or biscuit on top.

  4. 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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).

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
Forms the bulk of the pudding and thickens as it cooks in liquid.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
New milk
Provides the liquid base that the sago swells in and gives the custard its body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overbaking makes the custard grainy and watery as it separates. Pull it when the centre still wobbles slightly, since it firms as it cools.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, sugar, bread. 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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