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Dessert

Baked Sago Pudding

A baked pudding made from sago, milk, eggs, and sugar, topped with whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the sago

  1. Stir the sago into the cold milk in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolk, sugar, and flavoring.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the egg white with a little sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the whipped egg white over the pudding and return to the oven for 2 minutes.

  3. Serve with cream.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Its starch swells and thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the sago cooks in, forming the creamy base of the pudding.
Egg yolk
Enriches the pudding and sets softly with gentle heat, adding richness and a tender texture.
Egg white
Whipped until stiff, it forms a light foam that gives the topping its airy, browned finish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the base and the meringue-style topping.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk in off the heat. Adding the yolk after removing the pan from heat lets it blend in smoothly. Stirring it into a boiling mixture can scramble the yolk and leave bits of cooked egg in the pudding.

“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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