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Dessert

Sago Pudding

A baked pudding made from sago, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and optional flavorings and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sago Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sago

  1. Soak the sago in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil the soaked sago in 1 quart of milk until soft.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in the butter and sugar, then let it cool.

  2. Beat the eggs until frothy and stir them into the mixture.

  3. Season with lemon juice, rose water, or nutmeg, and add floured currants or raisins.

  4. Mix everything together and pour into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Swells and softens in milk to form the pudding's body and bulk.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like texture.
Milk
Cooks with the sago to form a creamy base and adds moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the baked top.

The step that matters

Boil the sago until soft. Sago must be fully cooked and softened in the milk before baking, because it will not finish softening in the oven and may stay firm or grainy if undercooked.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, egg, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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