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Soup

Sago Soup

A soup made with sago and gravy‑stock, optionally flavored with Harvey's sauce, cayenne, lemon juice, sugar, sherry, or beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sago in several waters to remove dirt.

Cook the soup

  1. Combine the sago with the gravy-stock in a pot.

  2. Let it stew gently for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  3. For a thicker consistency, add an additional ¼ ounce of sago for each pint of liquid.

  4. If desired, add Harvey's sauce, cayenne, lemon juice, sugar, and sherry for flavor.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 simmers, thickening the soup into a light, starchy body.
Gravy-stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the savory beef flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Stewing the sago gently with stirring. Sago settles and sticks to the bottom of the pot as it thickens, so it can scorch if the heat is too high or the pot is left unstirred. Gentle heat and occasional stirring keep the starch dispersed and the flavor clean.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper, sugar, sherry, beef):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, sugar, sherry, beef. 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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