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Soup

Sago Soup

A warm soup made with pearl sago, stock, optional sherry, lemon, sugar, cayenne, and optional thickening with arrowroot or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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.

Make 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 soup, add ¼ ounce more sago for each pint of liquid.

Season and finish

  1. Optional: Add sherry, lemon juice, sugar, and cayenne to taste.

  2. To make white soup, mix cream with arrowroot and add to the soup.

Variations

  1. For a simpler version, substitute beef broth for gravy stock.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine pearl sago
Swells as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it a starchy body.
Gravy stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savoury stock and the sharpness of the lemon.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream mixture added to make the soup white and silky.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the white soup a smooth, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Stirring during the stew. Sago settles and sticks to the bottom of the pot as it swells, so occasional stirring prevents scorching and keeps the starch evenly dispersed in the liquid.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, lemon, sugar, pepper, cream, milk. 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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