Name: Sage Padding
Ingredients: 2 ounces sago; 1 pint milk; 5 eggs; 2 Naples biscuits; brandy to taste; sugar to taste; melted butter for serving; wine for serving

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 ↓

Sage Padding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Boil sago in milk until tender.
Let it cool.
Add eggs, crushed Naples biscuits, brandy, and sugar.
Boil in a basin.

Serve

Serve with melted butter, wine, and sugar.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,427 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,738 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sago: Swells in the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and soft, tender texture.
Eggs: Set when heated, binding the pudding together and giving it a firmer structure.
Milk: Cooks with the sago to form the moist base of the pudding.
Naples biscuits: Crushed into the mixture, adding sweetness and a light biscuity flavour.

“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.